Out In The Cold
by MMB
Summary: Lyle hatches his most diabolical scheme ever, leaving Miss Parker and Sydney fighting for their lives. NOW COMPLETE.
1. Variations on a Theme

Out in the Cold

by MMB

Chapter One – Variations on a Theme

It was a small, out of the way café not far from the university campus – and it was one of Lyle's favorite hang-outs. From here, he'd been able to find two young Asian lovelies to grace his dinner over the years he'd been trapped at the Centre – and it was here, amid the ebb and flow of articulate, intelligent humanity, he'd been able to come up with some of his best plotting. It was natural, then, for him to choose to come here when he wanted to think through what would inevitably be his most audacious and hopefully successful plan to date.

For three years now he'd languished under William Raines' Chairmanship of the Centre – three long years when he'd been fundamentally in a life-or-death struggle with his twin sister to see who could be the first to bring the Centre's most prized possession back into the fold. But Jarod, genius that he was, hadn't cooperated with either of them. No, the damned Pretender had gone to ground and cut all ties with the Centre. No amount of badgering or threats had been able to uncover either his whereabouts or that of any member of his family. The last any of them had seen or heard of him was on that airliner returning from Scotland, when he'd saved them all from death and then so rudely and deftly escaped. There had been one phone call to Miss Parker a few days later, and one short one to Sydney just a few minutes thereafter – and then nothing.

But did that mean that Raines would eventually get the hint that the Pretender had finally decided to vanish after years of being the one to provide the clues that the Centre had been following? No… it HAD meant, however, that the threats to all of them – and HIM in particular – had simply gotten more frequent and more lethal. Both his team and his sister's had been subjected to a minimum of two grueling and demoralizing t-board examinations a year as the result of their continued collective failures to produce results of any kind. The last of those inquisitions had been a few months earlier – and Lyle was certain that there was another in the offing within the next few weeks if something wasn't done to change the rules of the game. That was a situation that he just didn't want to face again.

Casually he smiled up at the pretty girl that brought him his customary coffee. "You're new here, aren't you?" he asked in an interested tone.

"I've been here almost a week," the young blonde grinned back at him, please to have been noticed by such a debonair and sophisticated man.

"How do you like it here?"

She looked around in that proprietary way that an employee would when they were thoroughly enjoying themselves. "It's a great place to work. The customers are the best, and the tips are pretty good too, for being this close to the U." Then her eyes focussed on him, and he could tell that she liked what she saw. "Are you here often?"

Ah, to be twenty-something and that naïve, he thought to himself. "Often enough, although not as often as I'd like sometimes," he told her somewhat cryptically. "I'm sure that if you continue to work here, I'll be seeing you off and on…" His eyes sought out the embossed name on the tag. "…Erin."

She flashed him a delighted smile that told him his use of her name had been taken as a compliment. "Is there anything else I can get for you, Mr…."

"Lyle," he finished for her, feeling oddly companionable. "No, not at the moment."

"Enjoy your coffee, then," she said with a nod and walked off to the next table.

Lyle let his attention remain caught by her – by her smile and easy-going friendliness – and then he shook his head. What a commentary on his life it was that he found the openness and charm of a university student – for that was what she HAD to be – so alluring. After all, his tastes generally ran to the exotic – Oriental women with delightfully subtle accents that came from overseas and few family members here in the States to miss them when he decided to go on one of his hunts. Then he chuckled at the thought of the look on Sydney's face should the old psychiatrist ever get a hint of his thoughts at the moment.

Then his face folded into serious contemplation again. Back to the problem at hand, which was plain – Raines HAD to go, and Miss Parker would have to go at roughly the same time. What made the problem a stickier one was that each of those people had those around them that would make any serious attempt to do away with their nominal superior difficult – or who would make an inordinate fuss should something happen to their superior. Willy, Sam, Broots and Sydney would therefore also need to be dealt with along with their superiors.

Lyle sipped at his coffee thoughtfully. It wasn't an impossible task he was contemplating here – but damned close to it. After all, Raines' sweeper could be easily trapped with his boss – a car bombing would most likely take care of the both of them quite effectively. In his pocket was the name and telephone number of just the man to take care of that side of his problem.

The Triumvirate, he knew, would heave a huge sigh of relief when Raines was no longer in the Chairman's office. Raines had an almost psychotic predilection for ungainly and virtually impossibly complex attempts to restart the Pretender project without the key player in that project – Jarod. A new cloning project had just recently ground to a halt when the senior biologist had pointed out that the tissue that was being used as source of the DNA was too old and in poor condition to hold much hope for success. He'd been to the lab himself – he'd seen some of the unsuccessful results of Raines' insistence on proceeding. Between the smell of formaldehyde and the grotesque samples of something definitely not human floating in the various glass containers, he'd had nightmare fodder for the better part of a week. Then there had been another abortive attempt to steal another child and start the project the 'old-fashioned' way – an attempt foiled by a very alert and watchful teacher and one parent being in law enforcement. As the operative in charge of that attempted theft, Lyle himself had only barely escaped detection and arrest.

But he'd been close enough to the Triumvirate for long enough to know that there was little chance that any real authority at the Centre would be handed over to him and him alone – especially considering his own extended lack of performance when it came to snaring Jarod. No, simply removing Raines wouldn't be enough – because the Triumvirate would demand a joint Chairmanship with him AND his twin sister. They had already spoken to him once about the eventuality of Raines' demise and what they wanted to see in place at the Centre in the hours following that event. A return to profitability was uppermost on their wish list – combined with an almost fanatical insistence that the Centre remain at least nominally in the hands of a member of the family which founded it.

And therein lay his problem: getting rid of Parker and her entire entourage wouldn't be quite so simple as a car bomb. For one thing, she was deeply suspicious of him – anything approaching car bomb simplicity would have to be simultaneous with the car bomb that would take out Raines and Willy. For another, Sam was suspicious of everyone – him and Raines in particular – and was well-known for giving any vehicle that his boss was going to ride in a very thorough security check before letting her anywhere near it – up to and including Miss Parker's own Boxster every night before leaving work. For yet another, there was the fact that it was extremely rare that the whole team was together on an excursion anymore. Half the time, Broots was left behind in the Centre to watch computer data traffic in regards to whatever scenario of which they suspected Jarod to be a part. Another significant percentage of the time, Sydney remained behind in the Sim Lab, finishing research and waiting for the contents of Jarod's lair to arrive – or Sam was left behind in the case of their knowing ahead of time that they were coming in too late to catch the Pretender.

"Are you kidding? Don't you know how cold it is out there right now?" Lyle turned his head when the slightly sharper voice of an older woman caught his attention away from his musings. The woman, her hair an even mixture of salt and pepper, was staring in exasperation at the man who was facing her. "I have no intention of getting out there and ending up snowed in for the rest of the winter – or getting caught in a storm on the way and being found during the Spring thaw…"

Lyle began to smile. Maybe getting to Miss Parker and her entourage wouldn't be quite as difficult as he'd thought.

"Can I get you anything else, Mr. Lyle?"

He blinked and turned to face Erin, who'd approached him from the other side of the cafe. For some reason, he found her smiling face pleasing and her determination to keep a good mood going comforting. "Actually," he smiled, feeling expansive enough for having finally thought his way through his conundrum that he didn't want to loose that refreshingly optimistic ambiance so soon, "I was wondering when you got off work."

"Why?" She set the coffee pot down on Lyle's table and tipped her head to the side.

"Because I'm here in town alone today, my business is finished, and I thought I might enjoy the company of a pretty lady to dinner later. Since you're one of the only people I know here…"

Erin's eyes grew a little wary. "Well, I don't know… I don't think my bosses here will appreciate my hitting on the customers…"

"Ah," Lyle lifted a forefinger to emphasize his point, "but I'm the one hitting on you – not the other way around." He gazed at her evenly. "Now if you have a boyfriend who isn't particularly fond of sharing…"

"No," she shook her head almost before she had a chance to think it through. "It isn't that…"

"I can make it easy for you," Lyle told her gently. "You choose the restaurant, and we can meet there at a time convenient for you."

Green eyes fluttered self-consciously. "It's just that I'm sure a good-looking guy like you can get a date with a far more sophisticated woman…"

"You're right," he replied without any guile, "but at the moment, I'm finding you a refreshing change. Sophistication isn't always everything it's cracked up to be – believe me! So what do you say?"

The young woman was obviously thinking about the offer, and cast a couple of glances in the direction of the cash register and the slightly pudgy man who was manning it. "OK," she allowed finally. "I don't suppose one dinner will do any harm. Do you know where Gianinni's is, on Elm?"

"I'm sure I can find it," Lyle breathed a sigh of relief. "What time?"

"I can meet you there at seven this evening," she told him.

"Seven at Gianinni's, then," Lyle smiled up at her. He reached into his pocket for a twenty when Erin deposited the receipt for his coffee in front of him. "Here – and keep the change." He drained the rest of the coffee and rose – finding that he was considerably taller than she was. "I'll be looking forward to our dinner."

"Me too," she told him with a smile. "See you then."

Lyle even tossed the man behind the cash register a warm smile on his way out the door. Once more, this café had worked its magic for him; he'd figured out his problems – at least more or less – and life would soon be going much more his way. Why not have an old-fashioned date with a woman almost young enough to be his daughter? It had been a long time since he'd been with someone simply because he wanted to enjoy the company of another human being without some Centre agenda being part of the experience, that was. Tonight he would just be a businessman, enjoying the company of a pretty young coed without any echoes of his past, his present, or his unusual hobbies or culinary tastes seasoning the conversation.

He waited until he was out of the café entirely before pulling his cell phone from his jacket pocket, along with the slip of paper that had the name and phone number he needed to call and began dialing. "This is Lyle," he intoned after the voicemail message had finished and the beep had sounded in his ear. "Call me ASAP – I have a job for you. There's twenty K as ready deposit, and twenty K when the job's successfully concluded. You know the number. Don't wait too long."

He disconnected, thrust the phone back into his pocket and walked away down the sidewalk, whistling merrily.

oOoOo

"Just checking in before I'm taking off for the evening," Miss Parker announced breezily as she stuck her head through the door into Broots' space. "Anything on our lost Pretender?"

Broots looked up at her with an expression that clearly stated, "Are you kidding?" but schooled his voice to the proper level of subservient decorum. "Nothing, Miss Parker. But," he allowed the wisps of a smile to lift the edges of his mouth, "I've been working on a new algorithm for my search program that should mean a thirty-five percent increase in the efficiency of the search…"

"Good going," the tall brunette let the more candid expression go without comment, but frowned as the technician turned back to his frantic typing. "But didn't you tell me this morning that you have something going with Debbie tonight?"

"Oh, yeah!" Broots gave a sudden and vicious poke at his keyboard to exit all of his programs at once and then rose from his seat so fast his chair slid halfway to the partition behind him. "She has the lead in the school play this time around – and tonight's opening night. I promised her I'd be there with bells on – and maybe a flower or two. I'm taking her out to dinner first, though – to celebrate her first opener as the 'star' of the show." He glanced down at his watch. "I REALLY need to get going, or she's going to kill me!"

Miss Parker's face softened. There were two people in the world that could bring out the latent gentility she'd inherited from her mother – and Debbie Broots was one of them. "What time does the performance start?" she asked, tipping her wrist to look at her watch.

"Seven-thirty," Broots replied, his eyes widening. "Why? You going to come?"

"I might," she grinned mischievously at him, "but I don't want you to tell Debbie, OK? Let it be a surprise."

Broots' face slowly cracked into a huge grin. "That's one secret I don't mind keeping," he chirped happily. "I'll see you later then, Miss Parker?"

"Get going," Miss Parker ordered with a voice reminiscent of her old Ice Queen days. "You don't want to keep your daughter waiting."

"No, ma'am!" The computer tech gave her a jaunty wave and then strode briskly down the row of cubby openings toward the door of the Computer Technologies Center.

Miss Parker snickered and then followed him, only she turned left and walked down the corridor toward the Sim Lab rather than right toward the elevator. She had an idea, and she would need the assistance of the third member of her team to carry it off. "Sydney!" she called the moment she was through the automatic sliding glass doors.

"Down here," came the accented reply, and she walked across the platform and down the metal stairs to where she could see the silver-haired Belgian psychiatrist patiently coiling up the wires with which he had attached electrodes to one of his latest research subjects. "What can I do for you at this late hour on a Friday?"

"You can tell me if you have any plans for the evening," she answered, walking across the room with deliberate grace.

The silvered brows climbed his forehead and his hands slowed at their task. "What did you have in mind?"

"Debbie Broots is female lead in the high school play that opens tonight. I was thinking of attending and showing some support." The grey eyes were twinkling. "And frankly, I'd just as soon not go by myself…"

"Uh-huh." Sydney turned to finish his task with a sedate smile. "What time does this performance begin?"

"Seven-thirty."

The psychiatrist straightened again and glanced up at the wall clock. "That leaves just enough time to go home, change, grab a sandwich…"

"Hell, Syd," Miss Parker put a hand on a hip, "I was thinking that if I buy the tickets – and maybe spring for a nightcap afterwards, I could talk you into taking me to a half-ways decent restaurant…"

That brought Sydney around to face her with a look of surprise on his face. "Why, Miss Parker! Don't tell me…"

"Oh, stuff it, Freud," she cut him off before he could start pontificating when time was short. "I promise, you can psychoanalyze my motives and actions to your heart's content over the nightcap – but for now…" She cast a hard eye at the coils of wire in his hand, "put it in gear, will you? I'd like to get to the high school auditorium in time to get good seats, wouldn't you?"

Sydney tossed the wires on the table and motioned brusquely to a hovering lab assistant to finish the job as he marched to the coat tree to collect his jacket and beret. "Have I told you lately that you are a very impatient person, Miss Parker – and that such impatience can have a seriously debilitating effect on ulcers?"

Miss Parker tucked her hand into his elbow and smiled with a sweet and toothy grin. "You're such a flatterer, Sydney. I just don't know what to say to such riveting commentary. I can tell our dinner conversation tonight is going to be captivating."

Sydney used his free hand to perch his beret on his head. "You're in a particularly interesting mood tonight, Parker."

She shrugged. "I just have a hunch that things are going to be changing soon."

He glanced at her sharply. "For the better, I hope…"

"I'm not sure," she admitted, and then used her free hand to encircle Sydney's arm possessively. "But I'm not going to worry about it tonight. Just for a little while, let's pretend that the Centre didn't exist – that you and I are simply old friends having dinner and seeing a play together. OK?"

Miss Parker's hunches were nothing to ignore, Sydney knew this far too well; but he decided to humor her. He would tend to be a little more mindful and aware of what was going on around him otherwise from now on – but for the evening, he'd let her good mood be contagious. "That doesn't seem too difficult a task," he responded. "How does a trip to Gina's sound."

Miss Parker smiled. It was a favorite of hers, and Sydney damned well knew it. "I thought you'd never ask," she smiled at him, more honestly this time.

oOoOo

"So what is your major?"

Erin looked at her companion over her bite of salad. "What makes you think I'm a student?" she answered.

Lyle shrugged. "Your age, the general proximity of your work place from the university…"

She laughed softly, a musical sound to Lyle's jaded ears. "OK! OK! I'm an English major," she admitted and put her bite of salad in her mouth. "You found me out." She waved her empty fork at him. "What about you? You're no student…"

"No, I'm not," he replied as he reached for the goblet of ice water. "I work for a research firm in Delaware that has close ties to some of the science departments here at the university."

"In administration?" Erin surmised astutely.

Lyle smiled in appreciation of intelligence at work. "You could say that," he replied after putting his goblet back down. "I am a direct assistant to the Chairman there, and I have my own team responsible for important tasks."

"Sounds positively ponderous," Erin remarked with twinkling eyes. "What do you do for fun?"

"You don't think being responsible for administering research that will benefit humanity isn't fun?" he teased back.

"I think it could get overwhelming after a while," she answered after a decent moment to think things through. "I'd imagine that one would have to exercise a fair amount of creativity to make up for the pressures of responsibility."

"True, very true." Again Lyle was struck by her simple, straight-forward honesty and acuity. How very close she was coming to the truth without very many clues given at all! Suddenly the challenge of giving her, in cryptic form, everything she'd need to know about what he was about without really tipping his hand as to what he actually did became clear – and he knew the game was afoot. "Very well. I like the outdoors – hiking, and backpacking – and I also am a reasonably competent Chinese cook."

"Maybe I should have chosen the Sichuan Palace for our meeting spot tonight," Erin said in a sudden rush of insecurity. "Are you sure Italian…"

Lyle reached out spontaneously and patted her hand as it lay on the table next to her plate. "For the most part, the only Chinese food I really enjoy is my own. When it comes to eating out, Italian is my favorite."

His companion visibly relaxed and smiled her relief. "Good."

"So," he continued, busying himself with his own salad, "tell me more about yourself. Are you from Baltimore, or did you just move here to go to school?"

Erin studied her dinner companion as she contemplated her reply. He had been kind, considerate and quite knowledgeable in the short time she'd been with him, and had a winsome sweetness that didn't reflect the callowness of youth. His face had its share of incipient laugh lines and a pair of worry lines between his brows that spoke of his being considerably older than her – and yet, he smiled with the ease of someone comfortable with who and what he was. Lyle intrigued her – and the expression in his eyes bespoke of a genuine curiosity.

"I moved here," she told him finally. "My folks and my little brother live in upstate New York."

"How come you didn't go to school closer to home then?"

"I wanted to be independent," she replied saucily. "Dad's on the town council and Mom's a cop – so it's really hard to do much of anything at home without someone ratting me out. New York City isn't far enough away for them – they'd be down every weekend, checking out my friends, telling me what I should and shouldn't do, who I should and shouldn't see…"

Lyle nodded. "So you came here because it's far enough away that a trip would take a little more planning and happen less often," he concluded.

"Something like that," she chuckled. "You sound like you had parents like mine."

"Not exactly," Lyle worked hard not to flinch when the comment unexpectedly brought the memory of the Bowman's faces to his mind. "I grew up with foster parents – and my dad was really strict and hard on me. My mom was…" How DID one describe her? "…life with my dad was hard on her. I left as soon as I could, and I haven't looked back."

"You went to school where?" Erin asked, her curiosity fully piqued.

"I did some of it in South Africa and some of it in Asia," Lyle told her, not quite ready to admit that his 'schooling' was more in martial arts, assassination and the arts of the hunt. "Then I spent time in Hong Kong before coming back to Virginia and getting a degree in business administration."

"Wow." Erin was duly impressed. "You've been all over the world!"

He shrugged dismissively. "I've done my share of traveling," he admitted casually, and then added, "No doubt your chance will come, one of these days."

"I don't know about that," Erin shook her head and then relaxed back in her chair as the waiter delivered her plate of linguini. She waited until it was just the two of them again. "We English majors tend to end up nicely housed in ivory towers – or else holed up in some garret somewhere writing our little hearts out."

Lyle looked across the table at the young woman who had so captured his fancy. "Is that what you want to do with your life," he asked in amazement, "end up either teaching kids who barely can write their own names, or starve honorably while writing the Great American Novel?"

"I don't think teaching kids would be such a bad thing," she countered, a fork entwined with linguini hanging in front of her. "I like kids – especially high school aged ones."

"Not surprising," he remarked before he could stop himself, "you're not that long out of high school yourself."

Erin grew just a little indignant. "I'm 23," she announced proudly. "I'm a long way from high school."

"Sorry," Lyle backpedaled quickly. "I didn't mean that to come out the way it sounded."

Erin glowered at him, but couldn't miss the look of genuine contrition. "I suppose I should feel flattered," she stated, as much to herself as to her companion.

"Mark it up to my advanced old age, please?" Lyle put on his warmest smile.

She tried, but she really couldn't stay put out with him. After all, she had a feeling that he really didn't get out with many people younger than himself very often. He had that lonely 'little boy lost' air about him tonight. "You're forgiven," she smiled at him then, and rejoiced in the look of relief on his face.

"Good," he speared another bite of his lasagna, "I didn't want the entire evening spoiled because I can't keep my mouth shut when my brain's in neutral."

"Something tells me that that's something that doesn't happen very often with you," Erin commented, her intuition speaking to her loudly.

"In my business, I sincerely hope not," he replied. "So tell me, what do YOU do for fun?"

oOoOo

"Thank you, Daddy," Debbie beamed as she carried the red rose bud that had been handed her right after the performance over to where her father was waiting for her next to… "Miss Parker! Sydney!" If Debbie's evening had been complete before, it was perfect now. "You came too?"

"When your dad reminded me of why he had to leave work, how could I resist?" Miss Parker smiled at the girl. She gave the girl a tight hug and then stood back so that Sydney could hand her the rose bud that he'd insisted on picking up before the performance.

"You were magnificent, cheri," the psychiatrist purred at her as he bent forward and deposited a fond peck to the young woman's cheek.

"You didn't tell me they were coming," Debbie accused her father with a wide grin.

"Miss Parker was only thinking about it when I left," Broots reasoned in his own defense, "and I didn't know anything about Sydney's showing up." The look in the technician's face as he gazed at his psychiatrist friend was filled with gratitude.

"Miss Parker invited me to come with her," Sydney filled in the gaps with a patient grin, "and I'm glad she did."

Debbie smiled back at him, warmed and thrilled by the support of her father's closest friend and a woman she considered a surrogate mother. "Dad, there's a cast party over at Moe's in about a half hour – can I go?"

Broots' brows furled. "How late will it go, and how will you get home?" were his first thoughts.

"I don't know," Debbie shrugged in youthful nonchalance, "maybe eleven, maybe midnight. I can catch a ride home with Cheryl and Grace, though…"

Broots put on a show of thinking about the event, although Miss Parker and Sydney could see the glint of the twinkle in his eye. Debbie shifted from foot to foot nervously. "I guess there's no reason to say no," he announced finally. "Tomorrow's not a school night – and I have your promise you'll call if the ride with Cheryl and Grace falls through?"

"I promise!" She went up on tiptoe to kiss her father's cheek. "Thanks, Dad! I'll see you later – and thanks for coming, Miss Parker, Sydney!"

Sydney chuckled at the sight of a very excited high school freshman heading back into the cloud of recently un-costumed teenagers. "You have a very talented daughter, my friend."

Broots glowed under the gaze of his boss and colleague. "She is, isn't she?" he gushed. "She really has blossomed with this theatre class she's been taking – she's so much more out-going and active lately." He ran his hand over his bald pate. "In some ways, it's almost comforting – but in others, it means I have just that much more to worry about. I mean, high school always seemed so far away – and now…"

"You're doing fine," Sydney assured him.

"Well," Miss Parker slipped her hand once more into the bend of Sydney's arm, "I believe I owe you a nightcap."

"That was the agreement," the Belgian nodded serenely.

She looked up at her technician colleague. "Would you like to join us for a drink at the Velvet Glove before heading home?"

Broots blinked at the invitation but then shook his head. "Nah. I want to be home when and if Debbie has to call. I appreciate the offer, though…"

"Maybe next time," Miss Parker nodded.

Sydney raised his hand in a farewell. "We'll see you Monday, then."

"Provided my new search program doesn't turn up something interesting," the younger man added as a proviso. "You never know, when it comes to Jarod…"

Miss Parker snorted. "We wish! Good night, Broots," she said. "See you later."

"Good night Miss Parker – and thanks again for coming." Broots smiled fondly. "I think you made her opening night."

Sydney led Miss Parker through the throng of milling family members, waiting for their young performers and then out the front door of the high school auditorium. "If I remember correctly," he commented as he walked sedately with his boss – a woman he'd watched grow from a small girl and then tried hard to nurture despite her resistance – on his arm, "part of the enticement you offered when you invited me originally was a promised that I could psychoanalyze your motives and actions at this point in the evening."

She was silent a moment, unsure whether or not he was teasing her or serious. With Sydney sometimes, it could be hard to tell. "I know," she admitted finally, deciding that the truth was the best way to deal with whatever the wily old man had in mind. "Can it wait until I have one vodka and tonic in me, though?"

"Of course it can," he told her with a fond pat to her hand. "Actually, all I wanted before was to ask was one question."

"One question I think I can handle," she told him confidently as she waited for him to unlock the passenger door on his Lincoln. "What was it?"

"It was more commentary than a question, as a matter of fact," he shrugged as he pulled the door open for her. "I was only going to note how nice it was to see you getting out a bit in general nowadays – and how proud I was of you specifically for wanting to support Debbie. It meant a great deal to Broots too – did you see?"

Miss Parker's smile was soft. It wasn't often that she was given such an overt pat on the back for any reason by anybody who wasn't serving an agenda – and to get such an obviously sincere one from Sydney out of the blue like this was like having won the approval of a parent whose opinion mattered greatly. "Debbie's a good kid…"

"And you two have managed to get close despite your telling me all those years ago that you didn't 'do Mommy'…" Sydney's smile was wide as he slipped behind the steering wheel. "I take it you don't consider her a chihuahua nipping at your heels any longer?"

"Now I KNOW you're picking on me," she grumbled, still in a good mood. "That was a long time ago."

"Let's just say that I've been thoroughly enjoying spending a relaxing evening with one of my all-time favorite people," he responded as he turned the key in the ignition. "It doesn't happen even halfway often enough, as far as I'm concerned."

"I know," she replied truthfully again, finding it interesting that she actually agreed with him on this. "Maybe that's something I'm going to have to work on a little more diligently from now on."

"Who are you and what have you done with Miss Parker?" Sydney quipped with a mischievous grin aimed in her direction as he pulled the car to a halt just before turning toward the edge of town at which the classy and quiet Velvet Glove lounge was located.

A snort from the passenger seat was all the response he got, but it was enough to set him chuckling softly.

oOoOo

"What is it that was so all-fired important that you just HAD to call me back to the Centre on a Saturday morning?" Lyle demanded of the wizened and pallid old man seated behind the massive and carved Chairman's desk. "I finished talking to the representatives from the Prozuito family, got us the terms you wanted…" He stared. "DON'T tell me you've got a solid lead on Jarod…"

"I know more about what you've been doing than you might think. Just who is this?" Raines wheezed at him, tossing a set of glossy photographic blow-ups of what were obviously surveillance photos taken during his evening with Erin onto the desk. Lyle calmly straightened the stack and picked it up to sort through it. The first few shots were of them discussing things very seriously – the way they had at the very first part of their time together. The next were of the two of them dancing at the nightclub that they'd gone to together. The final shot in the stack was of him giving the young woman a genteel and chaste kiss on the cheek just before she climbed into her cab to go home.

Lyle bristled and then forced himself to calm and cool collectedness as he tossed the pictures back onto the desk with deliberate casualness. "She's just a young lady I met at a café and asked out to dinner," he related truthfully. "She's nothing to me." That one was the lie, for he'd been inexplicably entranced by Erin's entire demeanor – by her naivete, even her rather conservative values. It had been a very long time since he'd had such an enjoyably innocent date – and he had no intention of having it be the last one.

Raines' eyes narrowed as he noted the slightly defensive shift of Lyle's posture. "What do you know about her?"

Lyle's blue eyes collided rebelliously with the ice blue of the man who claimed to be his sire. "I know she's from upstate, her mother's a cop and her father's a city councilman in her hometown. She's an English major at the university…"

"All of that is unimportant. She's an outsider, and you know it! How can you be certain she can be trusted?" Raines almost shouted at him after a very noisy and painful-sounding gasp of oxygen from his ever-present tank. "What's more, how dare you take your mind off your work?"

"How can I be certain about anybody in this world," Lyle retorted, "including some of the people in this room." His eyes lit on Willy. "I'm telling you that she was just my date for the evening – and that's as far as it goes." His blue eyes shot iced lightning at the sickly man behind the desk. "What I do on my off-hours is none of your business."

Raines' voice got lower and more breathy. "What you do at all hours of the day IS the Centre's business – just as what your sister does at all hours of the day is our business. Or have you forgotten what happened the last time SHE decided to test that condition?"

Lyle swallowed. He'd been a part of making sure Parker had stayed on track with the Centre by 'taking care of' Thomas – by hiring Brigitte to murder him in such a manner that the message "Don't stray" had been conveyed very clearly. "I haven't forgotten," he stated sourly. "I'm telling you, this was only an isolated date."

Make sure that it stays that way," Raines wheezed at him in a threatening tone. "And now, there's another small matter that I want you to take care of for me – a reporter in Boston is getting too close to discovering our connections to people on the waterfront. I want you to take care of the problem."

"I'm not an assassin anymore," Lyle retorted hotly.

"You are what I tell you to be and when I tell you to be it," Raines barked back and then drew noisily on his oxygen again. "And right now, I want you on a Centre jet to Boston in an hour – and I want that reporter problem resolved by the end of the day. Is that clear?"

"As crystal," Lyle growled in frustration.

"Willy will go with you, to make certain that all the loose ends this reporter may have left behind him will be trimmed short as well," the balding ghoul in the big chair announced with a nod to his tall, dark associate.

"I don't need a babysitter." Lyle's rejection was absolute. "I move better and can get closer on a job like this when I don't have someone running around with me whose very posture screams 'heavy muscle' from every pore!"

"Willy will go with you," Raines reiterated. "The discussion is closed. Better get to the airstrip – the jet leaves in exactly one hour from now."

Lyle glowered at Willy as the dark sweeper turned to follow him out of the Chairman's office. "I've got a couple of things to collect from my office first," Lyle told him in a thoroughly disgusted tone. Wait for me down in the car pool – I'll be there in just a few minutes."

"Mr. Raines…" Willy began, unhappy at being summarily dismissed like that.

"Wants you to baby-sit the hit. I don't need a babysitter to take care of the rest of my business, and that wasn't your directive." The blue eyes snapped. "Now, I said I'll meet you down in the car pool in just a few minutes. You'd better get moving too, because if you're not there when I get there, I'll leave without you."

Ebony glower met blue-grey glower, and only after seeing that Lyle wasn't going to back down from his stance did Willy head off toward the elevator.

Lyle watched and waited until the elevator had closed behind Willy's tall form, and only then did he head down the hall to his office. Once the doors were closed behind him, he pulled his cell phone from his pocket and punched in a number.

"You'll have to wait for a bit before you can take care of the job," he announced unhappily. "The bodyguard has been temporarily re-assigned…" He listened for a long moment. "No. Listen to me. I want them caught in the same event – that way, there will be no questions. I'll call you when the bodyguard's back in the picture. What about…" He listened again, and this time the news he was hearing was more to his liking. "Good. Get everything set up so that we can make the final call on Monday morning, before any reassignments can happen." He listened again. "I'll leave the extra ten K in our regular drop – just get the arrangements all ready. I want this to happen simultaneously, do you understand?"

He pulled the phone away from his ear when the call disconnected, and punched in another number. "Hi, Erin? I'm afraid I'm not going to be able to make our date this afternoon. Something important has come up here at the office that I have to take care of right away. Can you give me a rain check until next weekend?" He listened with a soft smile slowly spreading across his face. "You aren't mad?" He listened again. "You're a doll, you know," he crooned warmly at her. "Don't work too hard between now and then, OK?" He listened, and then chuckled. "You take care too. See you."

The phone call concluded, he shoved the cell phone into his jacket pocket and walked over to the glass-faced bookcase in which he kept some of his most valuable treasures from his days in Africa and Asia. On the third shelf, behind a shaman's mask from Nairobi, he pulled out an oaken box and carried it to his desk. Within the box, cradled in the red velour was his custom balanced Ruger semi-automatic handgun, its two ammunition cartridges and an extra box of bullets. He picked up the gun and one cartridge, which he inserted into the handle and chambered a round, then put the loaded weapon, extra cartridge and box of shells in his other jacket pocket.

NOW he was ready, he told himself as he stalked to his office door and strode purposefully down the corridor toward the elevator, looking at his wristwatch. Five minutes. Willy wouldn't have quite had enough time to get impatient with him yet. Good. He only had to keep the African-American from guessing what was in store for him for a little while yet.

A smile lit his face as the elevator door closed. With any luck at all, by the time he saw Erin again, he would be sitting in that fancy, comfortable chair behind that fancy, carved desk – and then there would be nobody to tell him with whom he was allowed to spend time, damn it!


	2. Closing In

Chapter Two – Closing In

Lyle leaned against the brick wall on one side of the narrow alleyway and wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth, wincing when the movement put pressure on what had to be several loose teeth. When he heard the sound of footsteps approaching him at a fast run, he slumped down behind several cardboard boxes and huddled there, praying that the security man who had given chase would pass by the alley when there was no visible clue that he was there.

If anything could have gone wrong with this assignment, it had. Darrel Hendrickson of the Boston Herald had proven to be a more wily and cagey bastard than anyone had thought – certainly he had taken a clue from the reputation of the organization he was poised to expose and had taken some precautions against retaliation. The reporter had hired two very big, very talented bodyguards to watch over his every move – so that just getting close to the investigative reporter had been excruciatingly difficult. The man had hired a reputable security firm – whose protective systems had taken real creativity to circumvent.

What had been the first surprise was that Hendrickson had opted to protect himself with a handgun – one that he'd obviously taken the time to learn how to use. Willy, too big and too arrogant to back down, had discovered the hard way that the man was fully willing and ready to use that gun – and Lyle really wasn't sure whether Willy had been dead when he'd left the house that night, or merely mortally wounded. Considering the amount of blood that had been on the floor by the time he'd left, however, he doubted very much that he'd ever be seeing that dark face hovering over Raines' in the Tower office again.

He himself had simply been lucky. While Willy had distracted the reporter, Lyle had managed to get off several shots with his silenced handgun – and he was fairly certain that one of them MUST have put an end to the pesky reporter's dismal life, because the bastard had finally fallen. But he hadn't counted on those bodyguards getting into the house quite as quickly as they had. As it was, the two of them had caught up to him very soon after the attack on their employer – and they had registered their displeasure very effectively with their fists. One eye was already swelling shut, his mouth was bleeding, and he suspected that there was at least one broken rib. Only an extra gun, secreted in an ankle holster, had given him the necessary power to get free – shooting one bodyguard in the knee and then running like hell.

Lyle normally prided himself on his running speed – he didn't jog the dry sandy beach at the Centre on a daily basis and run in the occasional marathon for nothing. Several times over the course of his life, his feet had been his saviors. Now, as the footsteps slowed near the entrance of the alley and then trotted off into the distance, they had proven their worth again. Tired, breathing hard again now that he didn't feel he had to hold his breath to keep from being discovered, Lyle sagged against the red brick and considered his options.

The airstrip where the Centre jet was parked and waiting for him was over five miles away. Willy was God only knew where, either alive or dead. And the sun had gone down quite a while ago, which meant that the streets were dark and now far more dangerous. He could call the Centre satellite office here in Boston and get them to send a car to pick him up and take him back to the air strip – THAT was what he could do. Lyle thrust a hand into his jacket and pulled out his cell phone – only to discover that he'd forgotten to charge the little device the night before, and the battery was dead.

"Fuck!" The expletive burst from his lips, but he retained enough control of himself to keep it merely a vehement whisper. This entire trip was a fuck-up from the word go, as far as he was concerned – he was out of practice being a corporate assassin. Hunting Chinese girls for dinner was something else altogether – mostly because he didn't have to contend with a Centre sweeper hanging over his shoulder and screwing up his technique. What the hell had Raines been thinking? Didn't he trust him?

Now he had to find a way back to the air strip without Centre involvement. He hadn't brought any cash with him, so calling a cab was out – it looked as if he was going to have to walk. The airstrip was on the other side of town, too – in a poorly lit and uncomfortably dangerous part of the city. Lyle snorted with frustration. Damn it! Could the evening get any worse?

oOoOo

"Sissy?"

Miss Parker looked up at the bright and inquisitive face at her side. "What, baby?" she asked, and then gave him an indulgent and expectant face. "I thought I told you it was time for you to get ready for bed."

Jordan Parker put his hands on his big sister's arm. "When can I come and stay with you all the time? I really don't want to go back to the Centre tomorrow morning. I wanna go to school like the other kids…"

"Sweetie, we've talked about this before, haven't we?" Miss Parker flinched inwardly. This was beginning to become a consistent topic of discussion on Sunday evenings – the fact that her little brother really didn't like being cooped up in the underground suite of rooms at the Centre that had been his home since his birth. "I have to work – sometimes very long hours – and I might not be around to take care of you like I should…"

"But I can stay with Katie and Leon," Jordan suggested with eager dark eyes. "Their mom said that it would be OK, in case of emergency."

"Your Uncle Bill and I worked out this schedule a long time ago, Little Man," she shook her head and put her arm around his shoulders. "During the week, you stay at the Centre and do your lessons, and you get the weekends with me."

"But I don't like Uncle Bill," the lad continued to protest. "He smells funny and never talks TO me – he only talks to Nurse and Neil, and just about my lessons."

"Well," Miss Parker found it ironic that she was obliged to stand up in defense of a man she abhorred, "Uncle Bill just wants the best for you, baby…"

"He just wants me to do more math problems all the time," Jordan retorted resentfully.

"What about some of the other things you're studying," Miss Parker tried to distract the intelligent child. Had she been this difficult when she was this young?

"Neil doesn't like it when I spend more than twenty minutes on the piano," the boy told her with innocent frankness. "He likes me to be working on practicing my writing or reading about new stuff in science."

"Music is important too," Miss Parker told him firmly. "I'll talk to Neil and make sure that he understands that I want you to get your full practice time in every day." She mentally noted that a talk with her little brother's primary tutor be on the top of her to-do list for the next morning. "Besides, you like the piano, don't you?"

The little boy's face softened. "I wish I could play more than just one half hour a day, Sissy," he answered in a voice that shimmered with pleading. "I know that I could do so much better…"

"I'll talk to Neil about giving you some free time outside your room in the evening – or moving the piano into your room – how's that?"

"How about a piano here?" Jordan began to smile.

Miss Parker looked around her living room. "I'm not sure about that," she hedged. "I don't know where I could put it…"

"In the studio," he exclaimed happily. "I think Grandma would like to hear music in there."

"Grandma?" She looked down into the glowing face with confusion. "Your Grandma?"

The dark little head nodded earnestly. "She talks to me sometimes in there, Sissy – tells me things about you, and about my daddy." He glanced over his shoulder at the studio door, as if checking to make sure nobody was close by to hear him, then leaned closer. "She even told me once that YOU were my mommy."

"Me?" Miss Parker gaped. "I'm your sister, Jordan – not your mother."

The little boy just looked at her. "That's not what Grandma said," he insisted.

"You'd better go on upstairs and get into your jammies," Miss Parker stated after recovering from the shiver she'd gotten at the look in the little boy's eyes – a look that was so very familiar, although she couldn't for the life of her figure out why. "I'll be up to tuck you in when you're ready."

The little boy trotted obediently toward the staircase and began mounting the steps, leaving his sister watching him with a frown. It couldn't be. She'd delivered the baby herself – and it had been Brigitte writhing on the floor and eventually bleeding to death as the boy had been born, not her. Still, there had been several times when she'd allowed herself to think traitorous thoughts about how an old man who, it had turned out, hadn't actually been her father could possibly have fathered a child in the latter days of his life. Jordan's dark eyes didn't look anything like those of Charles Parker, nor like Brigitte – assassin turned stepmother. Whose child WAS he, Parker asked herself and then banished the question. It didn't matter.

The courts had appointed her his guardian in tandem with William Raines – and she was doing the best she could to give him a better childhood than she'd had. There was only one way to find out for sure…

"This is Sydney…"

"Syd…"

"Miss Parker!" The delight in his voice was unmistakable – and almost as much of a caress as if he'd given her a hug. "To what do I owe the honor…"

"I need your help."

There was only the slightest of pauses that betrayed his surprise before he was reassuring her, "Of course. What can I do?"

"I need to know Jordan's heritage, Sydney," she said in a tone that betrayed her own troubled conscience.

Again there was a pause, this one slightly longer. "What's brought this up after all this time?" the old psychiatrist asked carefully. He knew better than most how sensitive she was when it came to questions about her family tree.

"Jordan was talking about things his 'Grandma' was telling him," she answered, "including the fact that I am his mother." This time, the pause was long enough that she finally asked, "Syd? Are you still there?"

"I'm here," the melodic, accented voice replied softly. "What do you think?"

"I don't know what to think," she admitted frankly, "but I'd like to KNOW, if you know what I mean. If he's right – if he's hearing my mother, and it's her telling him… If…" She blinked hard at the tear that threatened at merely entertaining the thought. "Sydney, if he's my son…"

"Slow down, Parker," the older man cautioned gently. "We'll talk to Broots, and I'll get in touch with a couple of friends of ours who can run the tests outside Centre scrutiny."

"Sydney, if he's my son, then who's the father?"

There was another very long pause in which Miss Parker was certain that Sydney was considering the same possibility she was and finding it equally unbelievable and monstrous if true. "Looks like Broots and I will have to take another stroll through the genetic storage vault, doesn't it?"

"I'm ready, Sissy," she heard her little brother call from the top of the stairs, as was his habit when he was staying with her.

"I gotta go tuck him into bed," she told her old friend apologetically.

"Do you want me to come over, so you can talk about some of what you're feeling right now?" Sydney asked quickly, knowing his time with her was short otherwise.

"We'll have a very long talk when and if we find out that Jordan's 'Grandma' was right," she promised him. "And if I get any more worked up about it, I'll call again, I promise."

"Very well," Sydney sighed. Miss Parker didn't dive into investigating her deeper feelings without a great deal of pressure and need – he was hardly surprised at her putting him off this time. "Go take care of Jordan – tell him I said to sleep well."

"I will, Syd. Thanks." The relief in her voice was palpable.

"We'll figure this out, Parker," he promised.

oOoOo

Lyle wished that there was some way to postpone or even cancel the meeting that morning in the Tower that would start the moment he walked through the etched glass doors that he'd face after this one, last, elevator ride. The news had made national headlines and network news coverage about the attack on Darrel Hendrickson that had left one unidentified man dead, Hendrickson himself hovering near death in a coma, and one of his bodyguards permanently maimed with a gunshot to the kneecap. The reports were that the Boston police had a partial description of the assassin that had eluded capture, but the details of that description were being withheld for the time being. Raines was not going to be pleased – but then, he wasn't a happy camper himself at the moment either.

The only truly good thing to come of all this was that Willy was definitely dead. His identity would remain a mystery to others, inasmuch as working for the Centre at that high a level of authority meant that much, if not all, of the information regarding who Willy was and what he'd been up to for the last ten to fifteen years had been easily erasable by Centre-paid moles working on government databases. Willy would be forever unidentified – buried as a John Doe in Boston's Potter's Field, no doubt – and the only one who would miss him wasn't all that long for this world either, if all went well.

"Oh, don't YOU just look like you had a wonderful weekend!"

Lyle cringed inwardly and then turned to face his twin sister with a patently contrived smile. "You don't want to know," he warned in a deceptively calm and untroubled voice.

Miss Parker reached out and almost touched the puffiness of the one eye which looked as it was still the process of turning purple-black. "You need to put ice on that thing," she counseled with unexpected sympathy. "It will take down the swelling – although there's not going to be much that will help with the shiner." She looked him up and down very quickly, in a move that made Lyle almost blush. "Split lip too. Must have been one helluva weekend! Anything else wrong with you?"

"Aside from the broken rib," he quipped in a much brighter tone than he actually felt, "I'm just as right as rain."

"What WERE you up to?" she queried curiously. "Or is it more a case of she fought back a little harder than you anticipated?"

Lyle closed his eyes and counted quickly to ten. After the weekend he'd had, the absolute LAST thing he wanted to face was his sister's sarcasm. "You always believe the worst of me, Parker," he commented in what he hoped sounded sincerely hurt. "What am I going to have to do to convince you that I'm not the monster you believe me to be?"

"Die," Miss Parker stated flatly, and her storm-grey eyes reflected the hardness of her voice, "preferably sooner rather than later."

He smiled sweetly at her as the elevator door slid open. "You first, my dear," he replied with equal candor, stepping through and facing her as the elevator closed again. He took a deep breath and began to smile. The bitch had absolutely NO idea just how much that wasn't a wish, but a prophecy.

A call to his associate early that morning before heading off to the Centre had let him know that all of the arrangements were back on track – especially in consideration of the fact that the Centre jet was still grounded in Boston, the victim of a broken hydraulics system. The arrangements for Miss Parker and her team had been that it would have been they who were on the jet flying cross-continentally when the hydraulics problem surfaced, causing the jet to crash and killing all aboard. With Lyle taking the jet prematurely, those arrangements had needed to be adjusted slightly. The overall coordination problem had also been simplified by Willy's untimely demise – now there would only be the question of finding a convenient time and place to deal with William Raines. A car bomb for a single person was always so much easier to arrange than one to take out two with one blast.

All of these plans would begin to bear fruit AFTER this meeting, however.

Lyle brought his left, gloved hand up and gently massaged his chin and mouth, which also sported bruises and a split lip that hid the still painfully loose teeth that had yet to see a dentist. He only had to put up with all of this for a little while longer, he counseled himself so as not to let his temper get the better of him before he had any reason to. All he had to do was survive this meeting and see that the rest of the arrangements went into effect at the right time – and then his future was assured.

He straightened his back, ran his hand down his tie to make sure he looked as presentable as possible under the circumstances, and then pushed confidently through the glass doors.

oOoOo

Broots looked back and forth between Miss Parker and Sydney and let his distress and unhappiness show clearly. "You've got to be kidding me!"

Sydney shook his head gently. "You know that's the only way we'll ever be able to be sure of these things," he told his friend. "And if we do it now, it will be all over and done with – and I can get the material to my friend…"

"Broots, it's important to me," Miss Parker insisted quietly. "Wouldn't you want to know…"

"I'm not disputing the reasons," Broots shook his head quickly. "I'm just wondering if we'll ever run out of circumstances where we have to go to these lengths to prove or disprove the depths to which…"

"Let's get to it," Sydney put out his hand and helped pull his balding friend from his comfortable computer chair. "With any luck, nobody would be fishing in the gene pool at this hour of the morning."

Broots gave his old friend an astonished stare and then a shake of the head. "You've been hanging around Miss Parker too much lately, Syd," was his diagnosis. "You're even starting to sound like her."

Miss Parker chuckled as the two men walked quickly away. "Better he start sounding like me than I start sounding like him," she told herself and then picked up the phone at Broots' desk and dialed an extension. "Neil? This is Miss Parker. Do you have a few extra minutes this morning? I'd like to have a word with you…"

"If you want to talk now, Miss Parker, Master Parker is busy with his morning math problems…" came the calm voice of the man that had been chosen as Jordan's mentor and tutor.

"I'll be right there," she announced. "Meet me in the corridor – Jordan doesn't need to be privy to our talk."

"Yes, ma'am," the tutor answered.

Miss Parker walked quickly to the elevator and punched the button that would take her down to SL-12, where Jordan's nursery and schoolroom was located just down the hallway from the Renewal Wing. Under normal circumstances, she cleared changes in her little brother's schedule through Mr. Raines' office – but this time, she was doing this for Jordan, not the two of them. And because she was merely enforcing a decision that had been mutually arrived at over two years ago, she didn't feel the need to inform Raines of what she was doing.

Neil Harper was a tall, thin, sallow-faced young man with watery blue eyes that tended never to quite look at a person directly – and he was waiting patiently just outside the schoolroom door, as she had requested. "What can I do for you, Miss Parker?"

"Jordan was telling me how you keep pushing him to shorten the time he spends at the piano," she stated, coming straight to the point. "Mr. Raines and I decided that music and cultural enrichment would be a major part of his childhood – and I'm here to tell you that I don't want to hear of your attempting to shortchange him in that regard again."

The young man at least had the courtesy to look chagrined. "Master Parker could be so much further in his math and other topics, if only…"

"Master Parker's curriculum is yours to command EXCEPT when ordered otherwise," Miss Parker said in a lower, more dangerous voice. "He ENJOYS the music, and his teacher tells me that he's a very talented little boy. I want him to get the full benefit of the practice time he has scheduled during his day – but I also want him to have the opportunity to do more during his free hours, if he chooses. Therefore, I'm making arrangements for the piano to be moved into his nursery…"

"Mr. Raines will not be happy about this development!" Neil burst out in frustration. "It isn't good to give him too much access…"

"I'll clear this with Mr. Raines," Miss Parker snarled. "But I want any free time piano playing to be fun – and he is to continue his scheduled practice period as before. Do I make myself clear?"

Storm-grey met watery blue in a battle of wills, with the blue eventually conceding defeat. "Yes, ma'am," Neil ground out.

"I'll be checking with Jordan this next weekend, to make sure that my orders are being obeyed," she commented in a cautionary tone. "If I find out that you've punished him for having spoken to me – or threatened him to not disclose your continuing to try to pull him away from his music – your continuing at this post will be reviewed. Do not cross me, Mr. Harper." She withdrew her pointing finger from the tip of his nose and turned to walk away.

Miss Parker could hear the schoolroom door opening and closing behind her, and she breathed a quick prayer that this Harper character cared for her little brother even half as much as Sydney had cared for Jarod all those years. It was going to be a very long week before she could rescue the little boy from the bowels of the Centre again. She'd have to make sure to stay late and take the time to talk to the lad and make sure all was still OK with him sometime during the week.

She smiled at the thought of what Sydney's reaction to her sudden concern for the boy would be – already had been – on the phone. One of these days, she suddenly knew with absolute certainty, he would nail her down and begin to ask her about her sudden tendency to softness and sentimentality. She knew he didn't disapprove – but would want to know WHY, after all these years, she'd apparently turned a corner character-wise.

If she were honest with herself, she wasn't exactly sure of that one herself. Until the night her father – or the man she'd always believed her father – had stepped out of an airliner on a stormy night over the Atlantic, she'd left the care and welfare of her baby brother for the most part to the Centre keepers Mr. Parker had appointed to the task. Even for months afterwards, she'd only paid token visits to the toddler. It was only now, as the hunt for Jarod seemed to be winding to an unsuccessful close – which meant her dreams of freedom from Centre servitude were evaporating like last night's fog – that the child was beginning to take center stage in her off-hours mind.

By the time she was walking into the Sim Lab again, Sydney was bent over his desk, writing on a label that he then stuck to the top of a very small cardboard box. "I'm going to take an extended break," he announced quietly, seeing Miss Parker's eyes focusing on the box that was now in his hands, "and get this into FedEx right away." His chestnut eyes caught and held hers. "We need your answers quickly."

Miss Parker nodded without saying a word. And with that, Sydney grabbed up his beret and strode purposefully from the Sim Lab – moving at a pace that Parker hadn't seen since the last time they all had genuinely made chase on Jarod. Broots paused at the Sim Lab door to watch Sydney's departure. "He sure got that thing ready to go in a hurry."

"He knows I don't exactly want to sit on this," she remarked and then gave Broots a second glance. "What's the matter, Scooby? You don't look so hot."

Broots sighed and almost visibly sagged. "I'm not feeling too hot, if you want to know the truth. Deb was complaining of a stomach ache this morning, and a headache too – and truth be told, I'm starting to feel the same way."

Miss Parker backed away from him. "Get out of here," she directed the technician with a pointed finger. "I don't need to catch the flu from you! I just hope Sydney's constitution is more hearty than yours was!"

"Thanks, Miss P.," Broots sighed again, this time in relief. "I'll go turn off things on my terminal and then head out of here – I'll call you tomorrow morning, if I'm still feeling crummy."

"Tell Deb I said to get better quick," she replied, waving her hand at him. "And don't come back in until you feel better!"

oOoOo

"And remember, I don't want to be disturbed for ANY reason!"

Sung-Li gave a quick bow and backed toward the office door. "Yes, Mr. Lyle," she said in her softest, most subservient voice before spinning on her heel and leaving the lion's den.

Her boss was in a particularly foul mood, probably not helped in any way by the bruises and wounds that made him look like a loser in a prize fight. He'd left her only a half hour earlier in a quieter, more apprehensive mood, only to return looking as if he were ready to explode. She'd long since learned to ignore his occasional venting about the questionable wisdom of the Chairman himself – but this was something deeper, far more malevolent. She thanked the gods and the fates that it wasn't she who had inspired such ire.

Even now, she could hear him talking to someone on the phone – and his voice sounded like the voice of the devil himself. Looking at her own phone, she saw that there was no light lit – so he had to be using his cell phone. Sung-Li picked up the latest draft of a contract that Lyle was shepherding through the process and made a mental note of where her boss had scribbled alterations to the previous text. There were three such contracts waiting to be retyped – and normally, she would simply bundle the documents together and ship them off to the clerical pool. Today, however, she chose to keep them and do them herself.

It would make for a good way for her to look busy while her boss calmed down again and became ready and presentable for dealing with clients. She moved the first page of the contract into the document holder and then glanced down at his appointment calendar. There was just enough time to call the next two and reschedule their appointments to give Mr. Lyle the time he needed to cool off.

As she dialed the contact number, Sung-Li wondered how long it would take for Mr. Lyle to notice all the little things that she did for him to make his life and his workday easier? It was so rare to find an American boss who, on his better days, gave his instructions to her in her native tongue – speaking Mandarin like a native. He was so alone – going home every night to an empty apartment…

She shook her head and cleared it of the fantasy thoughts that would most likely never happen as the efficient voice of the secretary of the first client came on the line. "Mr. Lyle has had an unexpected emergency," Sung-Li lied glibly, "and needs to reschedule his appointment…"

oOoOo

Miss Parker frowned as the telephone ringing burst through her concentration. Without even needing to watch what she was doing, she reached out and snagged her receiver and brought it to her ear while keeping track of her place in the latest security report. "What?" she growled.

"Miss Parker," came Broots' tired voice over the line. "We've had a possible hit on Jarod's location."

"Broots," she looked up, concerned. "Didn't I tell you to get out of…" Then what he'd told her registered. "What did you say?"

"I said we've had a possible hit on Jarod," the technician repeated in an increasingly scratchy-sounding voice. "A sanitarium in San Francisco has uploaded a photograph of a John Doe committed last night for paranoid delusions and wild rantings. I've forwarded the picture to your email, if you'd like to take a peek…"

"Why aren't you home with Debbie?" she asked as she pulled out her keyboard drawer, activated her terminal and began accessing her email program.

"This came in just as I was getting ready to leave – and I thought I'd check it out before…" He left the sentence unfinished – for good reason. If he'd left without following up on the lead, and it turned out that it WAS Jarod in that asylum, it would have meant his job – or worse.

"OK, OK, but I want you gone as soon as…" Her voice faltered as she studied the photograph. Even as blurry as it was, the visage before her was vaguely familiar despite being incredibly gaunt and emaciated-looking. "Good God, if that's Jarod, he looks AWFUL!"

"That's what I thought," Broots coughed miserably into the phone on the other end.

Miss Parker's voice firmed. "That's it, Scooby. You get your ass home and into bed – I'll take this one from here. And when you feel better, see what you can dig up from home on this John Doe – does he have a record anywhere, you know the drill…"

"I will, Miss Parker. See you…"

She reached across her desk and just hit the disconnect button briefly before dialing the number of a Centre extension that she'd known by heart from childhood. "This is Miss Parker, just letting you know that my technician has come up with a solid lead on Jarod in San Francisco and we're taking the Centre jet…"

"That is impossible," Raines wheezed unhappily. "The Centre jet is grounded in Boston with extensive hydraulic repairs underway."

"Well," Miss Parker rocked back on her heels and stared out her window, "what would you suggest we do?"

"There's no other alternative – book yourself and your team seats on the next available commercial flight out of New York, and catch the commuter out of Dover to get to New York quickly. Leave your flight numbers and itinerary with my secretary before you leave."

"Yes, sir." Miss Parker sighed and moved to the door of her office to peek her head out at her secretary. "Get me three first-class seats on the next available flight from New York to San Francisco, and three first-class seats on the next available commuter from Dover to New York" she directed the young woman, "and then bring me the particulars."

"Yes, ma'am."

She disconnected the call and then dialed yet another number.

"This is Sydney…"

"Put on your traveling beanie, Freud – we have a possible sighting of Jarod and we need to get there NOW!" she announced, already rising from her seat.

"Jarod!" Sydney sounded completely nonplussed. "After all this time?"

"If this is the real thing, your lab rat hasn't done too well lately," she remarked, hitting the print button to send the forwarded photograph to her printer. "I'll show you what I mean when I meet you downstairs. You get Sam…"

"I haven't seen Sam all day," Sydney responded quickly. "I think I heard that he had to run errands for the Centre today."

"Shit!" Miss Parker hissed. "OK, you get your stuff together, I'll call Sam's cell and get him to meet us at the Dover airport."

"This isn't something Lyle or Raines has cooked up, is it?" the old psychiatrist couldn't help asking the question. "I mean, after all this time, to get a solid lead… and NOT have Lyle climbing all over it…"

"I suppose we'll find out when we get to California," Miss Parker shrugged. "Get a move on!"

Again she disconnected and turned around and dialed another number from memory. But this time, it took a little longer for the other end of the line to pick up. "Yes?"

"Sam, it's me.

"Yes, Miss Parker."

"Get your ass to the Dover airport and meet me there. We've had a hit on Jarod's whereabouts."

There was a short pause. "You're kidding!" Sam exclaimed with uncharacteristic candor.

"Not hardly," Miss Parker grumbled. "Whatever you're doing at the moment, this is more important…"

"I'm on my way as we speak," Sam told her, and the sounds in the background confirmed that he was walking very briskly – probably back toward the Centre sedan that he'd been driving already that day. "I'll see you at the airport."

oOoOo

Sam cursed as the car ahead of him on the road seemed determined to go ONLY the speed limit. Of all the times for him to get stuck behind law-abiding citizens, he thought to himself with a touch of irony. Here he was, poised to take off cross-country to try to snare a man who, according to all indications, the Centre had been holding illegally and highly unethically for over thirty years – and he was cursed with a forward escort of a little old lady determined not to break the 55 mile per hour speed limit!

What was worse was that the on-coming traffic was heavy enough that it was nigh on impossible to get enough time to slip around the little old biddy. Sam was fairly sure that Miss Parker would much rather he get there just a touch late than not at all. So he let fly with a few choice words that generally only were heard around the sweeper locker room that disparaged his obstacles genetic heritage, general level of education and the manner in which she'd acquired her driver's license and kept himself poised very close to the middle line. The instant there was the slightest let-up in traffic going south…

Finally! Sam hit the gas on the Centre sedan, which immediately leapt forward to speed around the slightly battered old minivan. What he hadn't counted on was the delivery van pulling out into the empty spot at about the same time that he was neck and neck with the minivan, giving Sam nowhere to go but off the road entirely.

The Centre sedan, a Crown Victoria, was a well-constructed vehicle that could weather many circumstances that would ruin any other car. It didn't do well, however, falling down an embankment virtually on the driver's side. When it finally was ready to come to a full halt, it groaned mightily once and then rolled over on its roof against the drainage culvert, effectively pinning anyone within the car in a shallow flow of icy cold water.

oOoOo

Miss Parker frowned and paced back and forth near the main entrance to the Dover airport terminal until Sydney walked out to the curb and caught her by the arm. "Miss Parker! Our plane departs in exactly ten minutes! We HAVE to get back through security and get on board!"

"We need Sam on this one, Syd, I feel it," Miss Parker jerked her arm out of Sydney's grasp and paced back and forth one more time. "All right, I'm coming," she growled at him and let him again catch her elbow and drag her into the terminal. At the same time as she was walking, she pulled out her cell phone and dialed Sam's number – and then frowned when the service announced that either the phone she was trying to reach was out of range or out of service. "That's odd!"

"You're just in time!" the attendant at the commuter flight desk told the hurried pair with a touch of frustration. "The pilot is ready to taxi to the end of the runway – they were going to leave without you if you hadn't gotten here…"

Miss Parker and Sydney didn't wait to hear the rest of the harangue, but rushed through the security check and out the doors and down the stairs to the tarmac and the little twin-engined puddle jumper that would get them to New York in time for their United flight.

"Good to see you folks," the stewardess smiled a patently contrived smile at them. "Please take your seats right away. We're ready to depart."

Miss Parker nabbed the window seat, as always, and sat down into her seat grumbling. "I'm going to skin him alive when I get back," she promised her companion. "There's no excuse."

"You never know, Miss Parker," Sydney tried to reason with her. "There is a lot of road between wherever it was that Sam was when you called and the airport…"

"Not an hour's worth," she retorted. This whole dash to the west coast had a wrong feeling about it. Somehow she found it difficult to imagine a Jarod so lost in his mental disease that he'd need hospitalization – and even more difficult to imagine anything keeping Sam from making a half-hour drive in over an hour.

"Maybe he'll call while we're in the air – and we'll make arrangements for him to catch up with us in California," the psychiatrist tried a reassuring tone and a gentle pat on the hand to ease his companion's tension. Miss Parker didn't like flying much in the first place – and these tiny set-backs weren't helping.

oOoOo

William Raines was tired.

Not just because it had been a long workday – he'd worked long hours for the better part of his life, so that ten to fifteen hours at a stretch was nothing new or out of the ordinary. It helped that he loved his job – it had taken him long enough to finally win the authority he now wielded, and so he enjoyed seeing people jump when he spoke and the covert looks of dissatisfaction or resentment even as they blandly agreed to do whatever it was that he'd ordered.

No, a goodly percentage of the cause of his fatigue was his physical condition. Living life tethered to an oxygen tank was limiting even in the best of times – not being able to do much more than sit at his desk and delegate others to do things that he used to love doing himself could be downright frustrating. He missed being in the laboratory with the psychological tests ongoing – he missed the direct contact with the test subjects that had always helped him feel more powerful and in control of life in general. Isolated in his Tower office, there was little that gave him the same direct experience of power.

And now, the one person he'd relied upon consistently to help him experience that direct feeling of power was gone. Willy was dead – his constant companion for nearly ten years would never walk into the office again, never would take charge of that little oxygen cart with its annoying squeak that rattled others with such effectiveness as to make fixing it counterproductive, never again would crack a smile in that deadpan face at a joke or thought that only the two of them appreciated. Raines' fatigue came at the thought of the world changing, and not for the better.

He walked slowly, so as not to overstress his debilitated respiratory system, toward the black Centre sedan that he'd long since requisitioned as his own. Tonight, he'd have to drive himself back to the fine mansion he'd purchased on the far side of Blue Cove – tonight, he'd have to prepare his own small supper and eat it alone. It would take days – weeks, perhaps – to find a suitable replacement for Willy; and it would take months thereafter before the man was completely trained in all the duties and obligations that would be his from now on, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

It was almost sunset, and twilight had always been his favorite time of day. The shadows were long and inviting and comforting, and the night was only a few degrees of visibility away. The transition from light to darkness – both as a psychological ambiance and a metaphor for the position of supreme authority – had fascinated him his whole life. So much of what he'd done over the years had been a practice of walking that thin line between light and darkness – always with a slight preference for the latter over the former.

Raines could see the lights of the houses on the very outskirts of Blue Cove when a small light on the console of his sedan caught his attention. Strange that the oil light would be on, he thought to himself – Willy had always made sure that this car was in the absolute best operating condition. Then again, as a slight ticking sound became discernable above the purr of the engine, Willy was gone. This was but another sign of the many ways in which his friend and bodyguard would be missed.

The explosion rocked the sleepy hamlet at the precise moment of sunset, and pieces of metal rained down upon the landscape for hundreds of yards in all directions of the pothole that had once been a Centre sedan.

oOoOo

Miss Parker focused out the round little window in the fuselage of the airliner, not for the first time in the last six hours. Ever since the night her fath… Mr. Parker… had taken his stroll into the stormy night sky over the Atlantic from the cargo bay of a struggling Triumvirate airliner on its way to Nairobi from Scotland, air travel had been very low on her list of enjoyable pastimes. The ease with which the large plane had still crashed, despite the best efforts of a certifiable genius to keep them from dying, had never left her. Jarod had escaped the wreckage and presumably gone about his life as if nothing had ever happened – while she had become a white-knuckled flyer, wishing nothing more but for the ordeal to be over the moment the wheels lifted from the ground.

There was a gentle pat on her right hand, and her face softened slightly. Leave it to Sydney to sense her mood and try in a non-verbal way to soothe. "I'm sorry, Syd – I'm not such good company this time around," she said quietly, not turning from her porthole.

"I'm not expecting you to be," came the lightly accented response. "I can imagine that having been on one plane that crashed makes it difficult to ride in any other."

Finally she turned to look at him, the expression in her eyes confused and tormented. "It doesn't help that I know that it was Raines and Lyle themselves who had sabotaged the plane, you know?" she asked rhetorically, at long last breeching her silence on an event that had been profound for over three years now, "or that it was Daddy who threw away all the other parachutes."

Sydney had to work to keep his face a study of neutrality and objectivity at finally hearing details of the crash that had supposedly killed Adama, one of the three powerful businessmen at the head of a global consortium known only as the Triumvirate whose existence seemed so closely tied to the Centre, and his team of bodyguards. "What is it then?" he asked gently, filing all the information away for review later.

"It's watching the ground coming up at me too fast," she replied, turning back to her window, "and knowing that there's not a damned thing I can do in my own defense. It's the feeling of helplessness…"

"Is that why you're suddenly so concerned with your little brother?" Sydney wondered aloud. "Do you sense his helplessness against the powers that be in the Centre, and use him to help yourself feel just a little more in control?"

Miss Parker was silent for a moment, and Sydney was just starting to wonder if he'd trod too soon and too heavily into the topic when she nodded vaguely. "It could be," she told him very softly and calmly. "And it could be that I just don't want him to end up like Jarod – or me." She turned to look at him again. "I want him to have a normal childhood, Syd."

Despite the soft ache of regret that came whenever Jarod's background was mentioned –exacerbated by the possibility that the wretch in the photograph she'd shown him actually WAS Jarod – Sydney could understand and sympathize. "I don't blame you," he told her gently. "I just wanted you to know that I'll be glad to help, if you ever think you need it."

"Thanks, Syd," she patted his hand for a change, and then clutched at the top of his hand when the plane gave an unexpected lurch. She turned quickly to her window and then gasped, "Something's wrong! We're too close to the trees!"

"Ladies and gentlemen," the voice of the pilot came over the intercom, terse and brusque, "we've just lost two of our engines. We're going to try to make an emergency landing in Salt Lake City, but things are going to get bumpy from here. Please listen to your flight attendants and follow all their instructions…"

"Sydney…" Miss Parker exclaimed, and then let out a little shriek as the plane again lurched badly. The interior filled with an odd whine. "Oh, God, not again," she whimpered.

"Lean forward!" Sydney counseled them even as the stewardess in their section began giving them the same instructions – only to be knocked off her feet at the next hard lurch.

"Sydney!" Miss Parker screamed and groped for his hand blindly.

He managed to catch it and carry it to his knee when the plane lurched again – and this time, the sound of protesting and crumpling metal filled the compartment.

The last thing Sydney heard was a loud crash and the beginnings of screaming.


	3. Reaction

Chapter Three – Reaction

Broots pulled his bathrobe tightly around him as he walked the short distance down his sidewalk to where the morning newspaper had been tossed. His stomach was still in an uproar after having spent the better part of the evening in the bathroom, losing his breakfast and lunch, and then spending the night trotting back and forth all over again to get rid of that which hadn't been purged already. His joints ached and he was cold – and not just because the late November mornings had been feeling more and more like snow every day. All he wanted to do was to pick up the mint tea he'd made for himself in the kitchen and head back to bed.

Deb, he knew, wouldn't be heading off to school that morning either. Her session with the bathroom had ended just in time for him to take up residence – and as far as he knew, she was still fast asleep in bed. Despite that, he'd made an entire pot of mint tea, knowing that when she finally did arise, she'd know enough to sip at that for a while before trying to keep down anything more substantial.

He waited until he'd retreated back inside the comfortable warmth of the house before dislodging the rubber band and removing the protective plastic bag from the folded newspaper and opening it up. He took two steps, intending to read only the headlines before taking up his mug of tea and heading back to the bedroom, but the top headline stopped him in his tracks:

United Crash in Utah – Wreckage Still Not Found

He read further, remembering the call from Miss Parker at Le Guardia, informing him of her flights and itinerary – she'd said that she and Sydney would be on a United flight across the country to San Francisco. Broots turned the paper over and read into the article with a growing sense of urgency. He turned and headed to the desk in the living room, where he'd left the post-it upon which he'd written all of Miss Parker's details.

There it was, in his own handwriting. The flight number Miss Parker and the others had taken matched the flight number of the missing plane. The shock sent him staggering backwards to end up with his rear propped up by the arm of his sofa. Miss Parker and Sydney and Sam – dead? It couldn't be!

oOoOo

The morning sunlight beat in mercilessly on the face of the man on the bed, eventually causing him to throw an arm over his eyes and roll away from the sunbeam. Jarod really didn't want to wake up – he had just had one of the most restful sleeps he'd enjoyed in many months now, ever since he'd taken the job as chief of security for the Bennings Foundation. Carol Bennings, heir to an immense defense contracting fortune, had made many enemies when he'd decided to use that money to fund projects designed to ameliorate the effects of the weapons his father had produced. Jarod, hired not long after Bennings established his organization, had been very busy ever since ferreting out and disarming one trap and assassination plot after another hatched by those whom the Foundation often put into an unfavorable public spotlight that as often as not ended up being scrutiny by law enforcement.

His latest triumph had been the uncovering of a plot to assassinate Bennings upon his arrival at San Francisco International for the official groundbreaking for a new foundation office building on the West Coast. The assassin, an otherwise lovely young woman who had managed to weasel her way onto the Bennings Foundation payroll as a secretary to Bennings right-hand man, now was resting in federal custody along with her fancy rifle and the picture of Bennings with the time and location of where the hit was to take place noted on the back.

Jarod had been proud of his efforts to catch the killer – and as a result, he now had almost enough evidence gathered to turn over to the Justice Department on Joseph Blair, Bennings most virulent critic and the former partner of Bennings Senior. Bennings himself had long had a suspicion that Blair had been responsible for the traffic accident that had claimed the life of his father – Jarod's call to his boss later today would be to confirm those suspicions. A memo had surfaced detailing the 'adjustments' to be made to the Bennings family limo's brake system – and instructions to make those 'adjustments' look like wear and tear failure.

Still, the sunlight was merciless – and as the source of the light rose higher in the sky, the sunbeam chased Jarod over to where he'd rolled and once more stabbed at his eye. Grumbling, the Pretender sat up, threw his legs off the edge of the bed and sat there for a moment, gathering his wits and scratching his very short, dark hair lazily. A quick glance at the clock on his nightstand had him on his feet, however, heading toward the bathroom and a quick shower. He wanted to be into the office in time to make his call to California as promised, just shortly after the ground-breaking ceremony.

The hot water poured down over his head and down his muscular back, rinsing away the froth of the bath soap and shampoo. Hot showers had been a luxury during his tenure in the belly of the Centre – his personal hygiene had been handled more often than not with a small square terry washcloth in a sinkful of warm water and a perfume-free all-purpose cleanser that was mean as much for hair as for skin. The much kinder products available to him in the outside world had become an adventure in discovery for him – and he'd tried nearly all of them before settling down to a combination that both left him feeling clean and smelling lightly of spices. Now, taking a shower was yet another way in which he proved to himself that life was truly better free from the Centre – and he never missed an opportunity to begin his day that way.

He pulled on freshly cleaned work trousers and white button-down shirt, and then headed to his kitchenette area to turn on the early morning news while he inhaled a bowl of sugared cereal and a full glass of chocolate milk for breakfast. The newscaster droned on and on about the latest warning from the department of Homeland Security – another adjustment in the alert color status – and other political news that Jarod really had neither the time nor the patience to try to understand. He'd had enough of theory – he by far preferred to live his life in the realm of practicality now.

He was just adjusting his tie and thinking of reaching for his sports jacket and briefcase when the story the newscaster suddenly switched. "And now, turning to national news we begin by bringing you the latest on downed United Flight 1598 from New York to San Francisco," the pert blonde woman read in very bland conversational tones. "Transportation and Safety Authority officials will neither confirm nor deny reports that the flight, a 747 with a listed 128 passengers on board, has yet to be located. Search planes were dispatched from the Salt Lake City area last night when the flight disappeared from the radar, with much of the search grid centering over rugged terrain in Wasatch National Forest."

Jarod was already reaching for his cell phone. Flight 1598 had been the flight he'd delivered Bennings to himself less than twenty hours earlier – and considering the enormous amount of energy and money that had been spent by Blair to make sure that Bennings never made it to San Francisco, it wasn't hard to connect the dots now. "This is Jarod - give me Hendricks, NOW!" Jarod demanded, knowing that with Bennings out of the picture temporarily, Blake Hendricks would be the man to whom he would be responsible.

As he waited his mind spun. Would Blair be so foolish and desperate as to kill over one hundred other innocent people merely to get to Bennings?

"Talk fast, Jarod – I've got a lot of people pushing at me to make all kinds of decisions until we find out for sure whether Carl's…" Hendricks didn't continue – and Jarod found himself grateful that he wasn't forced to hear such a thought voiced aloud.

"I need authorization to see whether this was someone else answering Blair's open contract on Carl, or if this was just coincidental," the Pretender answered shortly. "I need to move now if it was Blair responsible, before he gets much of a chance to cover his tracks…"

"Go," was Hendricks curt response, "and call me if you have anything."

"Will do," Jarod replied and disconnected the call only to turn around and dial another number almost immediately. "Sandy," he addressed his secretary without preamble, "get me on the next flight to La Guardia."

So intent was he on his phone call that he missed seeing the TV screen fill with a picture of the impressive Centre Tower façade, with the caption 'Murder' in bold red letters at the top.

oOoOo

The sound of puffing air and the sensation of there being some sort of constriction around his arm slowly insinuated itself into the darkness – and Sam moaned slightly. The last thing he could remember was the sensation of water – very cold water – running past his forehead, splashing into his eyes and ears. But now, it seemed, he was laid out flat and was quite dry and warm. He moaned again and finally forced his eyes to flutter open.

The nurse just removing the blood pressure cuff was a rather dowdy and plain middle-aged woman with salt and pepper hair – but her face broke into a beautiful smile when she glanced up and saw Sam's ice blue eyes studying her. "So nice to see you've finally decided to join us, Mr. Atkins."

"Where…" Sam put a shaking hand to his head, which he discovered was aching rather badly.

"Dover General," the nurse replied in a soft voice that apparently understood the gesture. "You were brought in last night – you had a car accident, remember?"

Sam's face folded into a frown for a short time, and then he nodded – and immediately moaned from the pain in his neck that blossomed from the motion. "I remember," he managed. "How long…" He forced his eyes open again. "What time is it?"

"About ten thirty in the morning," the nurse smiled at him. "I'm sure your doctor will want to check in on you, now that you're awake…"

But Sam was already in motion, despite the pain in his neck and shoulders that made rolling over in the hospital bed an exercise in determination, reaching for the little stand behind his head and the telephone that sat on it.

"Mr. Atkins, please!" The nurse had her hands on one shoulder and was trying to push him back into his pillows without hurting him too much. "You have a concussion and several seriously wrenched muscles – you need to just rest quietly for the next day or so…"

"What I need right now is to make a phone call," Sam insisted and glowered at the woman. "At least could you hand me the telephone, if you're going to force me to stay in this bed…"

"Against my better judgment," the nurse muttered, moving so that she could haul the telephone cord out from behind the little cabinet and place the unit on the rolling tabletop.

"Thanks." Sam picked up the receiver and dialed from memory. His face folded into a frown again when he heard the beginning of the automated message telling him that the number he was trying to reach was either out of range or out of service. He ended the call and dialed again, only to hear the same frustrating message.

"Having trouble?" the nurse asked him after noting his blood pressure on his chart. She had her thermometer in hand, with the protective sheath already on the probe itself. "Open."

Sam again glowered at her but suffered the quick test, knowing that the easiest way to get rid of the nurse was to cooperate with her. The moment she had the probe out of his mouth, he picked up the phone again. "Hard to talk with that thing in my mouth," he complained as he dialed a final number from memory.

"Hello?" Broots' voice on the other end of the line sounded horrible.

"Broots? Sam. Where's Miss Parker?" Sam demanded.

"Sam!" Broots' voice sounded tiredly delighted. "Where are YOU? I thought you'd gone with Miss Parker!"

"There was an accident," Sam explained tersely. "I'm at Dover General. But I can't get Miss Parker's cell to ring. What's going on?"

"Sam…" Broots sighed, not exactly knowing how to break the news to him. "There was an accident with the plane – Miss Parker's flight never made it to San Francisco."

"What?!" Sam sat bolt upright in bed with a grunt of pain. "Is she…"

"We don't know," Broots answered sadly. "I suppose it would be better to get ready to hear bad news."

"What about Sydney?"

"He was with Miss Parker." Broots paused for a moment. "If you're just waking up, then you haven't heard the latest from the Centre either, have you? I heard about it on the news just before I got too sick to care…"

Sam frowned. "What latest?"

"Raines is dead – a car bomb spread him all over the fields south of Blue Cove last night."

Now Sam was surprised. "Raines is dead, and Miss Parker and Sydney are missing? Interesting set of coincidences…"

There was a pause on the other end of the line. "Now that you mention it…" Broots pronounced slowly and thoughtfully. "I hadn't considered that."

"You sound like shit," Sam observed dryly, taking some small pleasure in the disgust that covered the nurse's face and had her walking briskly from the room at long last. "You still down with the flu?" That was what Miss Parker had told him was the reason Broots wasn't accompanying them…

"You got that right," Broots sighed tiredly. "And something tells me that if you hadn't had your accident, and I hadn't come down with the flu, we'd both be with Miss Parker and Sydney – and possibly dead."

"They just can't be dead," Sam told his colleague stubbornly. "I won't believe it until I see the bodies." He shifted on the bed and then fell back against his pillows with a grunt. "I'm going to have to take a day to get myself mobile again," he informed Broots. "And from the sounds of it, you need at least a day or so to get over the worst of your bug. But you and I need to be ready to move in not too long a time."

"You don't think…" Broots began and then thought better of speaking his suspicions in a loud voice. "You don't think that Lyle will come after the two of US, do you?"

"Considering that the two of us have proven often enough that we were more loyal to Miss Parker than we necessarily were to the Centre in general or to Lyle in particular…" Sam started.

"Forget I asked," Broots sighed again. "Keep in touch, OK?"

"I'll let you know when I'm ready to get myself out of this place – I'll need someone to pick me up, and I'm damned sure not going to call the Centre to do it."

"Take it easy," Broots cautioned Sam and then disconnected the call.

Sam felt around near his pillow until he found the control for the television mounted on the wall opposite his bed and turned it on. He pressed the channel select button until he came to a cable news channel and then settled back into his comfortable pillow to wait for the two news stories that concerned him directly and personally.

He might be laid up, but he sure as hell wasn't going to let a few aches and pains stop him from doing his job. If she were alive, he just knew that Miss Parker would be counting on him to get her the help she needed – and he wasn't about to disappoint her at this late date.

oOoOo

Lyle squirmed slightly in the huge and comfortable leather chair that sat behind the Chairman's desk, supremely contented and satisfied. After all these years, he was finally set to begin to enjoy the authority that he'd worked so hard to acquire and had every intention of wielding the moment the appointment was final. Already he knew that one of the Triumvirate themselves was on their way from Africa to confirm his elevation to the Chairmanship – a move made unimpeachable due to the unexpected and thoroughly coincidental loss of the United Airlines flight that his sister had been on.

The Zulus had, upon first hearing the news about Raines' demise, made clear that they expected BOTH twins to attend the meeting that was to happen the moment the private jet from Nairobi touched ground. Lyle viewed it his supreme honor to be in the position to inform them that his sister was no more – that she was lost up on some mountainside, probably freezing to death, if she weren't already breeding maggots.

As much as he would have liked to think that the crash of the airliner was the result of his saboteur, he knew better. The man had refunded the deposit on the air accident the morning of the day Lyle had returned to Blue Cove with the Centre jet on the ground in Boston. Figuring the man was probably feeling secure for having made the refund, Lyle had dispatched a sweeper and cleaner team to take care of his loose end. It wouldn't do for the police to figure out that it was a car bomb – which they already had – and then been able to trace the bombing back to the man who would then, to protect himself, sell out Lyle with few qualms.

Lyle knew that were he in that position, that would be what HE would do – and it was hard to picture any assassin or saboteur worth his salt that wouldn't do the same.

With a crooked finger, he beckoned Phil, his newest personal sweeper. "Anything new on the search for that United aircraft?"

"Not that I've heard, sir," Phil answered. Tall, blonde and extremely intelligent and well-read for the sweeper corps, he had known what an honor it was to be chosen by one of the Parkers themselves to be a personal sweeper. His assignment had come through only an hour or so earlier, and before that, he'd been lounging in the sweepers' dayroom, listening to the latest news. "They think it might have gone down somewhere in the Wasatch National Forest, but they aren't sure where." He shrugged. "It's only a matter of time, though – you can't crash into trees with something as big as a 747 without leaving some signs of what you did."

Lyle nodded thoughtfully, and then looked up at his new sweeper. "It's very important to me that I be kept up to date about that crash, Phil. It's even MORE important that, if by some fluke my sister managed to survive that, that she not return to the Centre alive. Do I make myself clear?"

Phil didn't even flinch. He was a part of the new power elite at the Centre – and that meant that there would be a small period of blood-letting that eliminated any trace of any former power elite. To him, Miss Parker was nothing but a name with an associated 'Ice Queen' reputation attached – seeing her dead would cost him nothing either emotionally or otherwise. "Absolutely, sir. I'll see to it that a team is dispatched if or when there is any news of survivors."

"Good." Lyle ran his hand over the rich, smooth surface of the massive desk appreciatively, then looked up to gaze at the slightly abstract painting that hung on the wall over the equally comfortable and rich leather couch. "Take that down," he ordered, "and have it burned. Get a small crew of sweepers not currently on assignment and bring the decorations from my previous office in here. I think this place could use some livening up, don't you?"

"Yes, sir," Phil answered immediately. "Will there be anything else, Mr. Lyle?"

Lyle thought. "Yeah. Make sure that all of Miss Parker's team was on that damned plane – and if they weren't, I want to know where they are." He thought for a moment longer. "And find me Angelo. I want that man flushed from the ventilation system and put into an escape-proof cell where I can get to him and use him when I need him. No more of this having to waste half a day nailing him down."

Phil now had a small spiral pad out and was taking notes. "OK – let me see if I have this all in my head: keep current with the story about the United crash and have a team ready to make sure Miss Parker doesn't survive it, get sweeper team to do some redecoration of this office using things from your previous office, locate all the members of Miss Parker's team, and find and contain Angelo." He looked up. "Anything else?"

Lyle smiled, satisfied. It looked like it was going to pay to have chosen an intelligent sweeper, rather than simply going for the muscle and martial arts training – not that Phil was lagging in either of those categories. "That should keep you occupied for the time being," he commented contentedly. "Tell Sung-Li to send the Africans right in the moment they arrive on your way out, will you?"

"Yes, sir."

Lyle watched his sweeper pocket the little notebook and slip from the office so smoothly that, had he not been watching, he probably wouldn't have noticed the departure. Once more he leaned back in the comfortable chair and swiveled in a complete circle, bringing the chair to a halt facing the picture window that looked across the broad expanse of lawn that stretched to the sea. This was a view of which it would be very difficult to get tired.

oOoOo

Through security and now simply waiting for the commuter plane that would carry him from Philadelphia to New York to begin loading, Jarod found a seat in one of a long line of molded plastic chairs and stretched his long legs out in front of him. He was antsy, wanting to already BE in New York, but working hard to discipline himself to still calmness – at least on the outside. He sighed deeply after looking at the wall clock again and seeing that he had at least another five or ten minutes before they would announce the flight – and then reached over to his left to snag the front page of the newspaper that some former passenger had discarded.

Headlining the newspaper, as he expected, was the story about the United flight lost somewhere in the mountains of Utah. The newspaper article, while longer and slightly more detailed than the television news broadcast he'd heard that morning, held essentially no further news. There was a small graphic that showed the search grid being used by the Air National Guard in trying to locate the wreckage, but that was about the only thing he hadn't seen before. His brow wrinkled slightly as he considered the terrain in and around the search area – those were rough and steep inclines, covered by a dense pine forest. At this time of year, there would be a serious danger of hypothermia to any crash survivor even though the first snow of the winter had yet to fall there. Carl, he knew, had a tendency to under-dress for the weather – and this habit could cost him in the long run.

With a sigh of frustration at being able to do nothing constructive to assist his boss at the moment, Jarod turned to the inside front page – and then started. Staring back at him from the page was what must have been a recent photograph of William Raines beneath a headline announcing his being the victim of a car bombing. Very slowly a smile began to spread across the Pretender's face. What better end to a true monster than having one's body blown into tiny bits! Perhaps now Parker could have a little peace – with that endless competition with her murderous brother at an end.

He just couldn't resist. He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and dialed a number that he hadn't called for well over two years – ever since she'd told him that the 'you run, I chase' game would have to continue. Surely now she'd tell him that the game was over – for who else would be chosen to run the Centre than she? Certainly the Triumvirate wouldn't choose Lyle…

"The number you are trying to reach is either out of range or out of service. Please make sure you have the correct number and try your call later."

"That's damned odd," Jarod muttered to himself as he disconnected that call and rapidly dialed yet another number from memory.

"The number you are trying to reach…"

"Damn!" he swore a little more vehemently as he hit the disconnect button on his futile call to Sydney with a frustrated finger. He ran his finger under his nose, unconscious that he'd learned this gesture years ago from his mentor and used it whenever he was temporarily stumped.

"Coastal Commuters flight 419 to New York City is now boarding at Gate 3," was the announcement over the airport's PA system. "All passengers please go through the glass doors…"

Jarod folded the front section of the newspaper and tucked it beneath his arm before reaching down for his briefcase with one hand and the silver Halliburton that never was out of his sight with the other. He'd have to let the mystery of why neither Miss Parker nor Sydney was answering their phones for a later time – maybe after he'd had his meeting with air safety crewmen on the ground at La Guardia.

Then he'd call Broots. He knew he could get a straight answer from the slightly retiring computer tech – after all, the two of them had once expressed a mutual admiration. It wasn't friendship, but it counted for something.

oOoOo

Sam bore the doctor's gentle insistence to listen to his heart and peer into his ears and eventually into his eyes with that blinding little light. Doctor Stefan hemmed very softly to himself as he palpated the right shoulder muscle and observed Sam's reaction. "C'mon, doc," Sam exclaimed finally, "talk to me."

"You're in pretty good shape for the shape your car was in when they found you," the aging doctor quipped with a smile on his face as he reached for the chart that he'd placed on the rolling tabletop. "How's the headache?"

"Bearable," Sam replied, not quite lying. "What all's wrong with me, anyway?"

"Well," Dr. Stefan flipped through the pages of Sam's chart, "you have a concussion – of which the headache and nausea when you move too quickly are the most common symptoms. You also did a number on your left shoulder – tearing the rotator cuff – and have a whiplash. All in all, you're damned lucky…"

"When can I get out of here?" Sam demanded.

"Anxious, are you?" the doctor asked sharply. "Where's the fire?"

"You don't want to know," Sam answered darkly. "Please answer the question."

"I'd like to see you rest here for the rest of the day and night – and we can reassess how you're doing in the morning…"

Sam's face had completely clouded over by the time the doctor had stopped speaking. "I can't be stuck here all day and all night!" he growled. "How long before I can expect to be able to get to my feet without feeling like my head is going to fall off or I'm going to puke my guts out?"

"Like I said," Dr. Stefan repeated with deliberate patience, "you need to just rest for today and tonight – by tomorrow, if all goes well, we can see…"

Sam closed his eyes. He hated hospitals – always had. "Thank you, doctor," he managed without snarling. "I know you're just doing your job."

The doctor leaned forward and patted Sam's good shoulder very carefully. "You just need a little patience, son," He picked up the chart and made a few, final notations before giving his patient a quick wave as he walked out of the ward door.

Sam shifted restlessly. He knew better than to just try to get up out of his hospital bed – for one thing, he didn't know if the little locker close to the bathroom door held the rest of his clothes, or if he was going to be checking himself out with only a hospital bathrobe to his name. He could wait and rest until later in the afternoon, when he'd place another call to Broots.

Since he'd spoken to Broots earlier, his worries had only mounted, and now he'd be damned if he was going to spend the night here. Miss Parker needed him.

oOoOo

Lyle got to his feet as the regal-looking African pushed his way through the etched glass doors of the Chairman's office. "Mr. Abé," he greeted the man unctuously, "it's good to see you again."

The aging African gazed at the suave man behind the desk who had stood and was extending his hand, and only as an afterthought extended his hand in return. "Did we not make our wishes plain," he complained, looking about the office with the air of someone quite disappointed. "We told you that we expected to see BOTH you and your sister?"

Lyle squelched his personal distaste for the way each of the three members of the Triumvirate seemed to speak in a plural form all the time when discussing business, as if each individual member at all times spoke for the entire consortium of stockholders, bankers, military men, manufacturers, shippers and dealers who had elected them – if not for the three elected leaders. He'd long since learned never to second guess or criticize the Triumvirate or its representatives – doing so tended to be very hard on the health.

"I'm truly sorry to have to tell you this," he began, the joy in being able to so neatly do away with any need to deal with his sister from now on quickly overcoming his pique, "that my sister had been called away on business prior to Mr. Raines' unfortunate accident. Now I find out that she and her associates were on the United flight that you've been hearing about in the news…"

"Are you saying that your sister is dead?" Abé asked in a frankly disbelieving tone.

Lyle shrugged. "We have no way of knowing at the moment," he explained truthfully. "They haven't even found the wreckage yet – there's no way to know if there were any survivors."

Abé's rheumy dark eyes peered at Lyle intently, as if seeking to look into his soul; and Lyle shifted in his chair, suddenly uncomfortable beneath the scrutiny. "Such a convenient coincidence for you," he observed sourly.

Lyle spread his hands wide across the surface of the desk. "I really can't help it, sir," he exclaimed earnestly. "I'm sure that if I'd known that someone was going to assassinate our former Chairman, I would have asked my sister to hold off on her trip until you had arrived."

"You do understand that any decision I make today regarding the leadership of the Centre is temporary, contingent upon the discovery of whether or not Miss Parker still lives?"

Lyle bristled, but forced himself not to show his frustration at all. "Of course," he replied in a deliberately bland voice. "That's not unreasonable."

Abé sat and stared at Lyle for a long moment without saying a word, until a man who obviously was part of the African contingent pushed through the glass doors and came to whisper into the older man's ears. Abé nodded and then looked back at Lyle. "Despite the fact that you seem to have moved into this office with every intention of making it your own a little prematurely," he commented, gesturing at the African masks and pieces of Asian artwork that now graced the walls and tops of bookcases and file cabinets in the Chairman's office, "we must conditionally approve your elevation to the position of Chairman of the Centre."

Lyle couldn't help the smirk that crept over his face – and Abé wasn't impressed. The aged ebony eyes narrowed. "You will, however, be responsible for writing a detailed plan by which you intend to bring profitability back to the Centre within a reasonable amount of time – which you will tender to a Triumvirate representative within the next four days. If your sister is found alive, we will have to reassess our decision – and give her a chance to submit a similar report. Ultimately, it is the question of profitability that will determine whether or not you keep your re-decorating job in place."

"I'll have the report ready long before the deadline, sir," Lyle told him confidently, his mind already spinning and trying to figure out who would be the best person to assign this menial task that was just too far beneath him. "And I thank you for your confidence in me."

Abé rose. "I will appoint one of my staff to be the Triumvirate representative onsite here until final confirmation is made. Your people will know of that appointment by the end of the day."

"Thank you again, sir," Lyle forced himself to stand and move out from behind the desk to shake the older African's hand. "If there's anything the Centre staff can do for you during your stay here in the States, please just notify my secretary – she'll see to it that your needs will be met immediately."

Abé simply nodded and turned around to walk from the office with the same regal grace that he'd used entering. Lyle watched the man's posture and pace, and then straightened himself slightly and tried to imitate the African's mien. He already knew that he was a feared quantity within the Centre walls – it wouldn't hurt to try to cultivate habits that would make him seem more distinguished and impressive outside Centre climes.

After all, he was a Red File too, wasn't he?

oOoOo

Jarod shook hands with the air safety crewman who had been responsible for all the pre-flight maintenance checks done on Flight 1598 and gave the man and friendly smile. The little Puerto Rican had been quite upset – understandably so – and a little reluctant to speak to yet another man claiming to be some sort of authority. However, once Jarod had first switched the interview from English to Spanish and just generally put the man's mind at ease as far as being held responsible for the lives that had boarded that plane, he had been quite forthcoming. Jarod's report to Hendricks would state that the chances of Blair being responsible for sabotaging the aircraft prior to take-off were miniscule at best.

With a sigh he turned and made his way back to the foundation limousine that was sitting at the ready for him at the mouth of the hangar. It was both a relief and intensely troubling to find no evidence of wrongdoing contributing to the crash. It meant that Bennings had survived numerous assassination and kidnapping attempts only to fall victim to a cruel twist of fate.

"Where to, Mr. Green?" the driver asked as Jarod walked up to him and the open and beckoning limo door.

"Back to the commuter terminal, Francois," Jarod answered tiredly. "I need to get back to Philadelphia.

"Yes, sir." The limo door to the passenger compartment closed as Jarod was settling into the comfortable cushions, and the powerful engine was brought to life not long thereafter.

Jarod leaned back against his seat and watched the business side of the huge international airport slip past outside his window for a long moment, feeling somehow at loose ends and superfluous. All that was really left for him to do was to transfer his loyalty to Bennings' second in command and try to make sure that lightning didn't strike twice – and to do that, he needed to be back at the foundation offices as soon as possible. He opened his cell phone and dialed his own office extension.

"Bennings Foundation, Mr. Green's office," answered the efficient voice of his secretary – a woman Bennings had hired after she'd brought a class action lawsuit against his father's company for its negligence in manufacturing faulty trigger locks for its most popular handgun. The failure of one of those trigger locks had gotten her husband killed by a burglar several years earlier.

"Sandy," Jarod greeted her. "I'm done here and on my way back to the Coastal Commuter terminal. See if you can arrange a first-class ticket back to Philadelphia on the next flight, will you?"

He heard a low chuckle. "You never do ask for much, do you?" Sandy quipped as she was already calling up the number for the airline on her computer.

"Only because you're such a miracle-worker," Jarod played along. "Any new word?"

"Nothing, sir." She sounded just as unhappy about relaying the news as Jarod was to hear it. "Do you want me to call you if there's anything new if you're not here yet?"

Jarod thought for a moment and knew that either way, he'd rather know that be left hanging with the suspense and apprehension he was in now. "Yeah. I'd appreciate that."

"Will do. Anything else?"

"Nope. Just get me on that plane sometime before dinnertime, OK? I didn't have lunch, and an airline meal just won't make up for it."

"I'll have a refill for your Pez dispenser waiting for you when you get here," she promised. "How's that?"

"Sounds good. Thanks again."

"I'll call back with your flight number and departure time as soon as I have them."

"You're a peach – anybody ever tell you that?" he grinned.

"And you're a pretty big bullshitter yourself, boss," she chuckled at him again. "Now hang up so that I can do the work you've just assigned me."

"Talk to you later." He chuckled as he disconnected the call. Bennings had never been able to understand the kind of banter that he and Sandy had developed as their working relationship – all he ever knew was that the handsome and somewhat haunted young Security Chief and said Security Chief's secretary always seemed to be laughing at some secret joke.

His relationship with Sandy Danziger was the closest thing he'd had to a real friendship since his days in the Centre with Miss Parker and Angelo, roaming the ventilation ductwork and emptier corridors. Her six-year-old son, Sean, adored him – and he'd begun taking the lad to the zoo and to museums on his off hours, to show the boy how much there was in the world to learn about. Over the past months, Jarod had become a frequent visitor at their apartment – finding the time spent with pleasing and comfortable companions a welcome break to his normally solitary lifestyle.

Then his eyes fell to the newspaper section that he'd put on the limousine seat next to him when he'd climbed out – and he sighed as he retrieved his cell phone from his pocket and thought for a moment before dialing a number he had rarely used before. If Broots wasn't there, he wasn't sure WHAT he was going to do…

"Broots residence…" sneezed a thoroughly miserable voice.

"Debbie Broots?" he asked carefully.

"Who is this?" Even through the congestion and misery, the wariness of the question shone clearly.

"I need to speak to your father, Debbie. This is Jarod."

"Jarod!" He could hear fumbling with the phone, and then the sound of footsteps heading off into the distance. "Dad!" he heard her call hoarsely. "Jarod's on the phone for you!" There was an unintelligible sound in the background that he assumed was her father, and then the sound of fumbling with the handset again. "He'll be right here… Oh. Here he i…"

"Jarod." Broots' voice didn't sound a whole lot healthier than his daughter's. "We all assumed you were ancient history now."

"I saw the news," the Pretender stated quietly, all pretense aside. "But I can't reach either Miss Parker or Sydney."

Broots sighed audibly – and Jarod knew that whatever else was going on in Blue Cove, he wasn't going to like it.

oOoOo

Erin finished putting the garnishes on the sandwiches for table six and turned around to take them out to the customers. Her face lit in a happy smile when she saw Lyle strolling very nonchalantly into the café, looking for all the world as if he had nothing better to do with his day than to sit in a coffee deli. His eyes, one of them sporting a rather nasty-looking bruise, quickly found her – and then he nodded his head and sat down at a table that he knew, under normal circumstances, to be under her care.

"It's very nice to see you again, Mr. Lyle," she announced more for the sake of her supervisor watching the action within the café itself than for Lyle. "What can I get for you today?"

"I was thinking," Lyle smiled at her warmly and, with a quick glance at the boss to make sure his attention was temporarily elsewhere, he put a gentle hand on her arm, "that I have the evening free and all day tomorrow. What's your schedule?" He grinned impishly. "Oh, and you can bring me an Irish Cream latte, if you don't mind."

"One Irish Cream latte coming up," she quipped in an efficient waitress' voice and walked back to the espresso station to put in the order.

"He's back again, isn't he?" Veronica, the one other waitress on this shift with whom she got along famously, bobbed her nose at the nattily dressed businessman playing with his napkin and looking around the café with a bored expression on his face.

"Ronnie…" Erin blushed furiously and then smiled in satisfaction. "Yeah, I suppose he is," she admitted finally.

"You gonna go out with him again?" the red-headed espresso operator asked slyly.

"He's wanting to know my schedule," Erin admitted, taking charge of transferring the foam from the milk to the top of the cardboard cup of latte. "Sounds like he's going to want to do something."

"Too bad old Herb has you working a full shift this evening," Veronica shrugged at her. "But you have tomorrow free, don't you?"

"I have classes until two…" Then Erin looked at her friend directly with wide and astonished eyes. "Hey! I should be telling HIM this, not you!"

"Oh!" Veronica sighed and put a restraining hand on Erin's upper arm. "If you ever get tired of that dreamboat…"

"Dream on, my friend," Erin shook her head and headed back to Lyle's table.

"Well?" he asked expectantly. "How are my chances?"

Erin regretfully shook her head. "I have to work until closing tonight," she told him, "and I have classes all morning." She brightened. "But I'm off at two. Pick me up at the Student Center at two-fifteen, and I can be all yours for the afternoon."

Lyle's face, which had begun to fall in disappointment, bloomed with a new smile. "Two-fifteen at the Student Center? That I can do." He let his hand trace her arm delicately. "I'm celebrating – so we'll have to make it a special day. Is there anything going on that you'd like to see or hear or…"

Erin shook her head. "I don't think so. I'm surrounded with people most of the time – it would be nice to just go off somewhere a little quiet – maybe have a nice dinner and go for a walk along the waterfront…"

"Will you have had lunch?"

"I'll probably pick up something from the cafeteria around eleven," she told him. "I usually don't eat breakfast, so I'm starving come lunch time. But I'll be hungry enough when dinnertime comes, if you're worried…"

"Nope, not worried at all," Lyle reassured her.

Erin turned and noticed the old man at the register gazing intently at her. "I gotta get back to work. See you tomorrow?"

"Two-fifteen. I'll be there," Lyle promised.

Erin bounced away from the table, her short, blonde ponytail swaying with her movement. Lyle chortled at himself, still almost unable to believe that he didn't have anybody looking over his shoulder or waiting to tell him what he could or couldn't do. The sensation of freedom was intoxicating.

And that was when he saw her.

Delicate and exotic, the Chinese woman waltzed into the café and right up to Erin with a wide smile on her face and began chatting with her with great animation. Lyle felt a familiar tightening in his groin – and suddenly he was hungry.

And what better way to celebrate his ascension to the throne at the Centre than through a well-done Hunt. He rose, stopped at the cash register to pay for his latte, and headed out the door in the direction of his car. From there he'd be able to discretely follow his next target and hopefully discover where she lived or worked – any place in which he could take control of the situation and convince her to get in his car.

His stomach growled. It had been too long.


	4. Rites of Passage

Chapter Four – Rites of Passage

The first thing that Miss Parker could sense was pain – sharp and insistent – in her right shoulder. Slowly pushing herself toward wakefulness, she moaned and tried to shift to alleviate the pain and very nearly lost her fragile grip on consciousness for her trouble. For a long moment she remained completely still, almost afraid to breathe lest it bring back the agony, and then finally she forced her eyelids to flutter open so she could begin to take stock of her situation.

Her left arm was in an odd and uncomfortable position, twisted almost backwards behind her; but by biting her lip and moving slowly and carefully, she was able to draw it back into her lap without much distress. About then the silence that surrounded her finally penetrated her shocked brain, and she lifted her head to look around her, groaning when even that was painful.

To her left, Sydney was very still, slumped with his chin down on his chest. What she could see of his face was deathly pale. "Oh God, no!" she breathed and carefully lifted her left hand to place practiced fingers against his neck – ignoring the ache that came with movement. Beneath her fingertips, she could feel the pulse in the carotid artery tapping strongly and regularly. Whatever else might be wrong with him, it was most likely that Sydney had been knocked unconscious at roughly the same time she had, and was just taking a little longer to come around again. Her fingers straightened some of the silver hair back behind an ear in an unthinking gesture of fondness and comfort-taking – the tiniest corner of her world had stabilized just a bit knowing that he, at least, was still with her.

Now she was brave enough to actually look around her to assess their situation – and what she saw and heard was not encouraging. There was an eerie silence hovering over and around her – one that made her skin crawl. She remembered that there had not been many people in the first class section with them – only a man and a woman who from their behavior had been newlyweds sitting two rows up on the opposite side, and another man two rows behind them on the opposite side. There was now an ugly rip in the side of the fuselage where the couple had been seated, and broken tree limbs protruded through the metal and had demolished the seats even as they had forced them back a complete row. Miss Parker could see a very limp hand dangling over the bent arm of the seat – and it looked as if there had been a steady stream of blood that had flowed down past the wrist, down the fingers to puddle on the warped floor.

From behind, however, the eerie silence was suddenly broken by a soft moan and then the sound of movement. "Hey!" Miss Parker called out. "You OK?"

The moaning ceased, but the sound of movement continued for a while. Then, finally, "I think I'm OK – but I'm not sure."

"Can you move?"

"I can't get the damned seatbelt loose," the man's voice stated in a flat and almost detached tone. "What about you?"

"I'm hurt," she replied. "I can't move my shoulder at all without practically passing out again."

"How's your father?"

Miss Parker opened her mouth to deny the relationship, but the sound of a soft moan from Sydney cut off her statement before it was uttered. Immediately she turned back to her companion and moved her left hand a little more surely, brushing silver hair back as the Belgian began to stir. "Syd! Talk to me."

Slowly the chin came up off the chest, and slowly the hooded chestnut eyes fluttered open. Sydney blinked several times in rapid succession, and then sighed. "Parker?"

"I'm here," she said softly and ran her hand along the side of his head again. "You OK?"

Again, moving slowly, Sydney began to move each extremity very cautiously. He straightened further in his seat and turned his head to the side – only then giving a low grunt of pain. He turned to face her, displaying a huge lump on his right temple that had dried blood trickling down from the small cut that was in the center of the lump and the ugly bruise that covered it. "I'm seeing double at the moment," he told her wryly, "and my neck is stiff - but as far as I can tell otherwise, I am… intact. How about…" His eyes traveled from her face to her right side, and then quickly back up to her face again. "Oh."

Miss Parker suddenly realized she hadn't looked down to see what it was that was so very painful, and moved carefully to remedy the situation. "Oh," she repeated Sydney's sound when she saw a shattered and broken length of wood as big around as his thumb – probably a splintered shard from one of the heavy branches that had torn things to shreds not far ahead of them – protruding from her shoulder three inches. Her blouse front was entirely drenched with blood.

Slowly she moved her left hand to reach for and grab the wood to pull it out of her body – only to have that hand caught and held in Sydney's. "Don't," he ordered sharply, "not yet. Wait until we have enough bandages around to staunch the wound afterwards."

"It hurts like a son of a bitch," she hissed.

"I know." His voice shimmered with sympathy. He carried her hand back to her lap and left it there with a couple of fond pats. "But I don't want you bleeding to death on me after surviving this far."

Grey eyes darted up to meet chestnut and then looked way, the amount of raw emotion they'd witnessed having made Miss Parker first very uncomfortable and then inexplicably warm and safe. "I can't stay this way forever," she snapped to cover her confusion.

There was a soft snick of metal on metal, and then the sounds of movement increased dramatically from behind the pair. Sydney looked up as a hand suddenly touched his shoulder. "Folks, we can't stay here," the stranger, a tall man with a full shock of sandy hair and vivid green eyes, said in a worried tone. "It's too dangerous."

"Where do you suggest we go – the closest hotel?" Miss Parker quipped after having shifted to see who owned the voice and not quite screaming as the movement tore at her shoulder again. "And can we get limo service – you see, I really don't think I'm up to the walk."

"Parker," Sydney chided gently. "Really."

The stranger merely shrugged. "I really don't give a damn about niceties, Pops – all I'm concerned about at the moment is getting the hell out of here." He looked down into startled grey and suddenly very worried chestnut. "I don't know about you two, but I really don't want to be in the area should there be any open fires from the crash reaching unspent jet fuel that spilled during the crash…"

Sydney's fingers began fumbling with his seat belt even as the stranger bent and reached down to unfasten Miss Parker's. Once she was free, the stranger waited until Sydney had staggered slowly to his feet and moved out of the way before bending down again and slipping his arm around Miss Parker's waist.

"Hey! At least, if you're going to manhandle me like this," she grumbled softly, "you could tell me your name."

"Bennings, Carl Bennings," the stranger replied with a slightly surprised look on his face. "And I heard your dad call you Parker – I take it that's your name?"

"I…"

Again she wasn't given time to deny the relationship. "Fine," Bennings took her expression for confirmation. "Now that we know each other, hang on…" And Bennings very carefully pulled Parker out of her seat and to her feet – ignoring entirely the grinding yell that grew in intensity as time went on.

"Wait a minute." Sydney move in front of the pair to halt any movement and then took very careful hold of Miss Parker's right hand. He moved it slowly and carefully just far enough so that he could tuck it securely into the tight, blood-soaked waistband of her trousers. "That should keep it more or less immobile for the time being," he told her, wishing he dared hold her as she struggled against the sobs of agony that had her biting her lip viciously. "And scream if you have to – you don't need to bite so hard to you start bleeding from the lip too."

"Ready?" Bennings asked the woman whose weight he was almost completely supporting.

Sydney moved closer and wrapped his arm about her waist from the other side. "Let's take it slowly."

oOoOo

Sam rose painfully from his seat on the molded plastic benches of the hospital lobby when he saw Broots' familiar face coming through the front door. Broots didn't look a whole lot better than Sam felt – his face was very pale, and his eyes had that tired look that came when one was having to struggle to put on a game face. "You look wonderful…"

Broots gave the sweeper a quick, assessing glance. "You're no feast for the eyes either," he commented and then coughed. "Ready to go – or do you have paperwork to finish?"

Sam shook his head. "I started the paperwork to get myself discharged against medical advice several hours ago." He gestured. "Let's go." The two men, neither of whom were moving very quickly at all, moved through the automatic door as a team. "Anything new happen?"

"I heard from Jarod…" Broots answered flatly.

Sam stopped in his tracks and stared. "Say what?"

It took Broots a moment to discover that his companion had halted a few steps behind him. "I said Jarod called," he repeated, turning to face Sam.

"What the hell did Jarod want, of all people…" Sam shook his head at the mysteries of life – just when the entire Centre was getting to the point that they figured the lost Pretender would never surface again, up he popped!

"He said he'd seen the news about Raines and wanted to talk to Miss Parker – but couldn't reach her." Broots' face mirrored his unhappiness. "I had to tell him the rest of it."

"And now I suppose he's going to drop everything and help us," Sam postulated in a seriously exasperated tone.

"Not exactly." Broots smiled inwardly – like himself, Sam obviously hadn't appreciated the self-doubts that Jarod's clues to Miss Parker had inspired anymore than he had. For the first time, he felt something in common with the huge, muscular sweeper other than the fact that they both worked for Miss Parker. Still… "He did say, however, that somebody he had been working for recently was also on that plane – and that from what he could gather, there were no signs of tampering or sabotaging anything before take-off. In case we were suspecting Mr. Lyle, of course…"

Sam nodded. "Well, that's something, at least." He moved to the opposite side of the car that Broots had approached and was now inserting the key in the car door lock. "Get in. You do realize we're both going to need to make ourselves scarce…"

Broots turned a haunted in his direction as he slid behind the wheel. "You don't think…"

"Look – Lyle's no fool. He knows we're more loyal to Miss Parker and Sydney than to either him or to the Centre," Sam told him frankly. "I'm a little surprised that he hasn't sent a cleaner team out for us already."

"Damn!" Broots hit the ignition and threw the car into gear. "Debbie!"

"We'll stop at your place – you two can pack as much as she can as quickly as she can – then we'll make a similar quick stop at my place to pick up some things. After that…"

"Where will we go?" Broots asked, aiming the car in the direction of the same two-lane road that Sam had been on just the night before.

"I know where I'd WANT to go," Sam stated emphatically and then shrugged at the questioning look he got from the driver. "Utah," he answered the unvoiced question. "I sure as hell don't intend to be twenty-five hundred miles away when Miss Parker needs me closer to where she is."

"Utah." Broots rolled the idea over in his head. "The mountains – at this time of year?"

"You don't have to come with if you don't want to," Sam told him seriously. "In fact, maybe you and Debbie should head off in a completely different direction…"

"If you think you're going to help Miss Parker and I'm going to run scared in the opposite direction…" Broots shook his head firmly. "I'm already packed – I keep a bag with essentials ready in the trunk just in case Miss Parker gives one of those 'we gotta go now, boys' calls to go try catch Jarod. I'll get on the computer and have plane tickets for the three of us while Debbie packs. I'll drop you at your place first – then pick you up again on the way out of town."

"You're sure?" Sam gazed evenly at his companion. "This ain't gonna be a cakewalk, you know…"

"Since when has anything having to do with the Centre been a cakewalk?" Broots asked back rhetorically. "Just tell me how to get to your place, willya?"

oOoOo

It had been easier than he'd thought.

Lyle gazed contentedly at the unconscious Chinese beauty in the passenger seat next to him while he was sitting at the stoplight, and then turned his attention back to the road when the light turned green. This one had as much of a 'thing' for Caucasian men as he had for Chinese women, it turned out – all it had taken was a smile and an offer of a drink to have her climbing into his car. Cherry Fu was about as uncomplicated and fearless a woman as he'd ever met – she'd even left him briefly to take a short trip to the powder room, giving him enough time to slip the Rohypnol into her drink.

And now she was quietly stretched out on a seat laid back slightly, as if a girlfriend who had gotten too tired. That was the story he would tell the manager of the motel he'd chosen to be the location of the Kill and all that went before – that he needed a place for the night because his girlfriend had fallen ill and needed a warm and private place to rest. Dark would be falling in not too long a time – and there were ways to get motel and hotel personnel to not see what they didn't need to see.

Lyle guided the black sedan around the corner and up into the parking space in front of the office to the Evening Star Motel – a more ramshackle and shady establishment he'd been unable to find on his quick circuit of Baltimore's red-light district. He jumped from behind the wheel and walked briskly into the office without a backwards glance at his captive, knowing the drug in her system to have at least another half hour's worth of stupor left in it before she began to come around.

With a grin and a wink, he had the two of them registered under "Mr. and Mrs. Robert Lyle" and the key to room 67 in his pocket. The managed gave him a jaunty wave as he'd exited the office and headed right back to the car. Room 67 was on the far end of the building – far enough away that any… ahem… noise… would cause as little commotion as possible. Lyle shook his head at the amazing capacity for people to believe his stories – a relatively isolated room at the far end of the low building had been easy to acquire with a simple story of having disturbed the neighbors at the LAST motel they'd stayed at.

Lyle pulled the car practically up to the door of room 67, jumped out, opened the door, and then came back to the car for Cherry. She moaned softly as he picked her up and carried her through the door of the room – and once more when he placed her in the middle of the king-sized bed. He had one more trip to make – to retrieve luggage from the trunk of the sedan – and then one small task to do before he could seal up the room for the rest of the night and into the morning.

His overnight bag was as light as usual – it held a sweat suit, tennis shoes, hangers for his business suit and toiletries only, after all. It was the black Samsonite suitcase that held the weight of his tools of the Hunt – handcuffs, leather straps, condoms, a roll of duct tape, a box of latex gloves, a scalpel, a meat cleaver, a plastic laundry bag, a plastic freezer bag and a very small, battery-powered ice box. Lyle lugged the two into the motel room and closed the door.

As was his wont, he stood for a moment in quiet appreciation of a world that would allow him the full enjoyment of such beauty. Cherry Fu was a delight to the eyes with her slim and strong, sinewy body, her long, straight, blue-black hair and clear ebony and almond eyes. Her sparkling laugh and impish sense of humor had made the Stalking a real pleasure – it wasn't often he'd been so entertained in the process of making a capture. He took a deep breath and enjoyed once more the scent of her perfume – light but musky.

Still, there was plenty of preparation to be done before the final act of the Hunt could be concluded. Careful not to touch anything with his hands unnecessarily and thus leave fingerprints behind, Lyle put the heavy Samsonite on the luggage rack near the television, and then carried the overnight bag into the bathroom. He returned to the Samsonite and opened it, withdrawing latex gloves which he pulled on immediately. A return trip to the bathroom garnered a damp washrag, with which he wiped down the outside knob of the motel room door, hung out the "Do Not Disturb" sign. That finished, he closed, locked and chained the door from the inside before wiping that down too.

Next, he returned to the Samsonite suitcase and extracted the leather straps that would hold Cherry's arms and legs securely so that she couldn't escape before the finale of his personal ritual. He'd had them specially made for him in Africa – each one hooked very effectively to the bottom of the bed frame and was long enough that the set of four together could hold the tiniest of women immobile in the middle of the biggest bed made. One by one he fixed the strap to the frame and then to a limb until Cherry was spread-eagle, utterly immobilized and helpless in the middle of the bed. He went back to the suitcase and cut a length of duct tape with the scalpel and pressed it firmly against her skin – covering her mouth and chin to down under each ear.

He moved into the bathroom and began by spreading the bath mat, one bath towel and the hand towels on the floor so that his feet wouldn't touch the bare tile and leave any prints that way. He then slowly and carefully removed every stitch of clothing he was wearing – taking the time to hang up the suit and dress shirt on the hangers, which he then hung on the back of the bathroom door. He laid out the sweat suit and tennis shoes near the end of the counter and unpacked his toiletries – then put his dress shoes and socks in the overnight bag for the return trip to Blue Cove.

Lyle took a deep breath. It was this next part that demanded patience. It was all too easy, and in his experience highly unsatisfying, to play with his Prey just lying there, unconscious. The Hunt celebrated Life after all – it wasn't simply a case of overpower and conquer. Especially this Hunt – he was celebrating the achievement of a lifelong dream. Having his victim virtually comatose wouldn't be at all proper.

The dose of Rohypnol he'd given Cherry would be wearing off in the next half hour – and he would wait for her to fully regain consciousness before continuing. Instead, he would spend the time sitting next to her, running his hand down his completely clean-shaven body and fantasizing about how good she would be when he took her the first time – how her fear and horror would make her heart pump faster, how her futile attempts to get away from him would add to the passion of the moment,. How his tightening his hands about her throat and squeezing off her air supply as he approached his climax would make her body spasm even more and give him the kind of release that mere consensual sex could only suggest.

He chuckled to himself as he rehearsed his first words to her when she was fully awake and aware of what was going on. He would remind her of her words of bravado earlier – about how there were very few real human monsters in the world – and then gently tell her that those monsters like him that did exist treasured brave souls like her.

The duct tape over her mouth would keep her screams from traveling far – but he'd be right there to enjoy them. It was enough to make his groin tighten already…

oOoOo

"Sydney, please…" Miss Parker's voice was pleading. "I can't go any further…"

Sydney cast his eyes about the area for some good place to let Miss Parker find a seat, and then he motioned toward a fallen tree trunk with his nose. "Over there," he directed.

Bennings could feel in his hold on the woman that her strength was failing, so he did what he could to move her over to the log as quickly as possible and then helped her settle down. "Better?" he asked her gently.

Miss Parker shivered and clung to the front of Sydney's jacket. "Is it j..just me, or is it g..getting c…c…colder?"

Bennings cast his eyes skyward and then looked back down. "There were a lot of clouds under us before we started our descent," he told her frankly. "And from the looks of things, we're up pretty high…"

"I've got to get that wood out of your shoulder and get you bandaged up before you bleed to death," Sydney said, stepping back and stripping off his sports jacket to drape about her shoulders. "That's probably why you're cold."

"Are you a doctor?" Bennings asked with a surprised look on his face.

"Psychiatrist," Sydney replied as he sat down on the fallen log next to Miss Parker and pulled her over so she could lean her good side into his shoulder – not quite frowning when she leaned a little more heavily than he'd expected. "I may spend most of my time healing shattered psyches, but I had to get through med school to get to that point."

Bennings gave Miss Parker a measuring look. She didn't look at all well – her face was pale, her eyes closed, her lips were blue. "What do you need to take care of her?"

"Optimally, a sterile field, suturing equipment and a cauterization tool. But," Sydney shrugged, "at the moment, plenty of clean material to tear apart for bandaging and a sling, some alcohol to sterilize the wound once the wood is removed and blankets to keep her warm and from going into shock once I'm through."

Bennings cast his eyes back over the terrain they had just traveled and back toward the wreckage. "Stay here," he told the older man. "I'll see what I can find. Maybe I'll get lucky and find a galley."

"Some of the overhead compartments had blankets and pillows," Sydney suggested – for once grateful for his experience in air travel. "Pillows have pillowcases…"

"Which, if we're lucky, won't be paper," Bennings finished for him. "I'll be back." With that, he pushed off to head back up the mountainside toward the wreckage of the first class section they'd just left.

"S…Sydney…"

"Shhhh…" the Belgian soothed, using his left hand to smooth back some of the dark tangles from Miss Parker's face and mouth. "Just rest against me for a while. Bennings has gone to see if he can find something for bandages, so we can get you tended properly…"

"Are you s…still s…seeing double?" Even through the shivering, the wariness was clear.

"A little," he admitted reluctantly, "but we don't have time to worry about me right now." He lifted the jacket from her shoulder to study the wound and the sticky crimson that had soaked the entire right side of her blouse and trousers – and still looked to be oozing steadily. "Bear with me Parker. This might hurt a bit – but I need to see how bad this is besides the obvious…" He touched her shoulder to the side of the protruding wood carefully and tried not to allow her hissed intake of air knot his stomach. Beneath his fingertips, he could feel her collarbone move in a manner it wasn't supposed to. "Your collarbone is broken," he announced bleakly.

"The n…news j…just gets better and b…b…better," she quipped with forced bravado.

Sydney very gently pulled the jacket back around her and lifted the collar so that just a little more of her exposed skin at the throat and back of the neck was covered, then took her left hand in his left as he moved his right hand very carefully around her back to hold her to him, avoiding a possibly damaged shoulder blade. "Yes, well, the good news is that we've both survived this so far," he reminded her in as warm and comforting a voice as he could manage. "I'm not giving up on either of us yet."

"I never r…realized what an op…optimist you could b…be," Miss Parker whispered into the base of his throat.

Sydney didn't answer. He didn't need her to know how genuinely frightened he was for her. They were out in the middle of nowhere, high up on a mountainside, and she had already lost a lot of blood. The temperature at the moment was crisp – but the sun would be going down soon, along with the temperatures. Hypothermia was a real danger at this point for her – she didn't have the blood volume to keep her body temperature properly regulated under such circumstances. Holding her against him for warmth more than comfort, with her wearing his sports jacket, was the best he could do for the time being – it wouldn't suffice for long.

He gazed up the hillside, through the trees, and prayed that Bennings would return shortly.

oOoOo

Bennings wrinkled his nose as he pushed himself closer and closer to the wrecked forward section of the aircraft that he'd just escaped not that long before. A little to his left, he could see wreckage far more crumbled and singed and devastated than the forward cabin had been – and there was plenty of evidence that the carnage of the back two thirds of the aircraft was horrific. It was almost obscene to think that he'd virtually walked away from something like this without a scratch, while so many others had had their lives snuffed out like candles in the wind.

The forward cabin had somehow separated from the rest of the plane – both the commercial class section behind them as well as the nose where the flight deck had been located. That front bit of twisted metal lay several dozen yards off to his right yet – mangled and flattened almost beyond recognition. Wires and torn, sharp edges of metal decorated the break where the sections of the plane had pulled or been forced apart, obstacles that took care and some planning to work around and through.

He had to admit, once he'd made it back inside, it was a little less uncomfortable within the broken first class section than it was outside in the breeze. The smell of jet fuel infused the entire area – even the small clearing down the mountainside where he'd left his fellow survivors – and it was no stronger or diffuse within the cabin than it was in the open. If things got any colder outside – and it was possible that if they ended up spending the entire night on the mountain before they were found and rescued, that it would get a LOT colder – it might be wise to bring Miss Parker and her father BACK into the first class cabin for shelter. It meant he'd have to admit he'd made a mistake – and maybe have to carry the injured woman back up the mountainside himself, if she was unable to make the climb on her own steam. But if he could survive this, he thought to himself, looking out the back of the separated section toward the field of carnage, he could survive being discovered to be fallible. And right now survival – his and that of the only other survivors he'd found so far – was the only thing that mattered.

Enough musing, Carl, he finally chided himself. He looked down the line of seats and then up toward the ceiling of the cabin, noting that most of the overhead compartment hatches had fallen open in the violent shaking of the crash. He reached into the first overhead compartment and felt around, only to pull out an empty hand – with the same result for the next three compartments. It was the fourth compartment where his hand first encountered soft fleece – and he pulled out first one grey blanket, and then another.

That would help a little. He put the blankets in the seat closest to the break in the fuselage and went back to his search, slowly and methodically working his way toward the very front of the cabin on the one side of the plane and then back down the other side. By the time he was back where he'd started, he'd found over a dozen of the fleecy blankets and had stripped at least as many pillows of their fine linen pillowcases, thanking God for the high-class tastes of first class passengers overall. He stuffed three of the pillowcases with as many blankets and empty pillowcases as would fit, in order to make the job of carting them easier.

When he went looking for the galley – or the storage cabinet for the little bottles of liquor – he discovered that the first class section had separated from the rest at right about the galley. There was a cabinet right at the torn edge of the section that showed that it once had been secured with a lock – but the crash had broken it open and allowed everything within the cabinet to tumble to the floor and shatter. But amid the shards of glass lay a single intact bottle of Absolut, which Bennings picked up carefully and then pushed further through the pile of broken glass in case it wasn't alone. It would have to do, he decided after a few moments of ultimately futile searching, slipping the bottle into the breast pocket of his dress shirt and reaching for his bags of cloth.

Only then did he hear it – the sound of movement from that mess that he'd been so carefully avoiding looking at. A low, keening kind of moaning that went up and down the scale. Bennings halted near the edge of the debris field and carefully placed his pillowcase bundles where he could find them again, and then began listening and following the wordless sound. He tried desperately not to see the body parts lying scattered about like so much trash – to avoid looking into startled dead eyes – as he scanned the debris field for signs of the source of the almost inhuman voice.

Finally he found the point of origin in a bank of seats that had completely separated from the fuselage and from the rest of the debris field entirely. It was a seven or eight year old girl seated next to a headless torso of a woman and pressing the shoulder of that torso in a desperate attempt to rouse a sleeping mother. "Hi there," Bennings approached the child and crouched down in front of her, carefully avoiding looking at the dead woman. "Are you OK?"

The only answer he got was a slight elevation in the volume of the keening as the child pressed harder and more frequently into the shoulder of the corpse.

"C'mon, honey," he said and crouched down to push the button and release the child from the seat, and then reached out and pulled the child to him.

The child stopped her keening suddenly and gazed with a shocked and almost uncomprehending intensity into the face of the man who held her close. "Let's go find the rest of my friends," Benning said gently and rose to his feet before turning to go back to his pile of pillowcases. The child gave one short cry, reaching over his shoulder toward her mother and then settled her head almost defeatedly on Benning's shoulder.

With an armful of child, Benning had to work a little to get a good hold on the three pillowcase bags – and he took extra long on his trek back down the mountainside so as not to trip and slip, causing injury to himself or the child, or lose his hold on the bags.

oOoOo

Sam took in the expression on Broots' face as he climbed into the back seat behind Debbie. "You look like the cat that ate the canary," he announced as he buckled his seat belt.

Broots coughed lightly as he backed the beat-up sedan that he'd been nursing along for so many years out of the sweeper's apartment complex parking lot. "I finally took a page from Jarod's playbook," he told Sam without taking his eyes from the road as he began steering the car back toward the highway again. "I dipped into one of Lyle's so-called 'secret' bank accounts." His eyes met Sam's in the rear view mirror. "A rather liberal dip, even if I do say so myself. And since my bank was still open for business, AND because my bank is accustomed to receiving electronic deposits and withdrawals of varying sizes from the Centre already, I was able to make a withdrawal…"

Debbie giggled. "I like your new way of defining things, Dad," she commented pertly.

"It's the Centre," Broots deadpanned back at his daughter. "It brings out the worst in people sometimes – and then in others, it brings out the best in them."

"I give up," Sam shrugged and tried to ignore the ache in his shoulder and neck that even a double dose of pain killer hadn't entirely wiped out yet. "How much did you take?"

"Give him the bag," Broots directed his daughter.

Sam opened the zipper on a small overnight bag that Debbie tossed over the back of her seat – and his eyes bulged. There were at least a hundred neatly wrapped bundles of hundred dollar bills tumbled into the simple canvas bag. "How much is in here?" he asked in a considerably smaller voice.

"About three hundred thousand," Broots chirped triumphantly. "If we have to be on the run for a while, we might as well carry it off in style."

"Shit!" Sam ran a shocked hand down his face, and then glanced up guiltily to see Debbie's bright face smiling at him over the back of the seat. He let his eyes touch her father's in the mirror again. "Ooops. I'll have to watch that…"

"Don't worry about it," Debbie grinned impishly. "Miss Parker doesn't – and sometimes she says things a whole lot worse than that…"

"Where to now?" Sam asked, desperate to change the subject.

"Dover – where we hop a commuter to La Guardia and then fly out to Salt Lake City."

Sam nodded very carefully. "Renting a car shouldn't be a problem on that end," he commented, eyeing the bag with the cash.

"I've already made reservations at the Hilton close to the airport for us," Broots continued explaining what his feverish fingers had managed to accomplish in what was, even for him, record time. "We can rest, freshen up, and then head towards the Wasatch National Forest when we're ready."

Sam leaned back against the cushions of the back seat. "Sounds good to me," he said, letting his eyes fall shut.

It was a relief to actually be doing something. Hang on, Miss P., Sydney, he cast his thoughts and prayers to the wind that whistled past the defective weather-stripping at the top of his car window. We're coming for you.

oOoOo

Sydney opened his eyes as he heard the flop of cloth hitting the ground at his feet, and then stared up. Bennings had found another survivor – a little girl, whose face wore the blankness of shock even as she clung to his neck. "Where did you find her?" he asked softly so as not to startle Miss Parker, who was dozing fitfully against him. The little newcomer in Benning's arms seemed almost oblivious to what was going on around her too, her injuries not as visible but equally debilitating.

"In a bank of seats that got torn away from the rest," Bennings recounted briefly, not really wanting to remember. "Her mother was dead in the seat next to her."

The psychiatrist shuddered and then nodded in the direction of the bags at his feet. "Blankets and cloth pillowcases?"

"Yup." Bennings used his free hand to carefully extract the tiny bottle of Absolut from his pocket. "This is it as far as alcohol, though. There might be more in the back galley – if it didn't explode when the tail section of the plane hit."

Sydney slipped the bottle into his left trouser pocket. "What about the jet fuel?"

"It's all over the place," Bennings admitted, "but it doesn't seem to be concentrated anywhere specifically. AND it looks as if there was a fairly big explosion in the back two-thirds of the plane – I have a feeling most of the problem was taken care of then. To be honest," he continued contritely, "we weren't in any danger at all. I shouldn't have…"

Sydney shook his head. "Don't worry about that now." He eyed the child. "I need to take care of Parker – and that little one doesn't need to be here when I do." The chestnut eyes rose to capture Benning's gaze. "Why don't you take one of the blankets from the bags you brought and wrap her up so she doesn't go into shock and…" He looked around him. "Check to see whether there is a stream nearby down the mountainside. We'll need water soon enough – all of us."

Bennings nodded and carefully bent down to extract a blanket from the nearest pillowcase bag. "Here," he said, seating himself on the fallen tree not far from Sydney and perching the little girl on his knee so he could manipulate the warm fleece around her body. "That should make you feel better."

The little girl's only response was to lean into him again wordlessly, staring off over his chest at nothing in particular.

Benning's gaze and Sydney's locked sympathetically for a long moment, and then Bennings got to his feet again. "Let's go see if we can find us some water, shall we?" he told his little armful before picking her up again and walking slowly and carefully away from the fallen log down the mountain.

Sydney watched them go and then turned to the woman in his own arms. "Parker," he called softly, patting her left hand with his. "Parker, I need you to wake up now." She moaned and pressed closer to him. "C'mon, Parker, wake up. I need you to sit up so I can make the bandages and take care of your shoulder now."

The grey eyes opened slowly and then blinked. "Shit. It wasn't a dream," she murmured in disappointment.

"I wish it had been," Sydney commented soothingly. "Can you sit up on your own for a bit? I have a little bit of preparation I have to do first before I can get that piece of wood out of your arm."

"I'll try," she told him and slowly straightened away from him until she was sitting upright unassisted. She shivered, missing his warmth. "I don't know how long I can last," she stated, closing her eyes briefly in concentration.

"It won't be for long," Sydney promised and pulled one of the bags over to within better reach. The wad of pillowcases was at the top of this bag, which Sydney removed one by one and patiently tore into three inch wide strips and draped each finished strip over his knee. He pulled out a fleece blanket and spread it on the ground in front of him, rolled each individual strip of pillow case and placed them on top of the blankets remaining in the bag. He pulled over another bag, extracted a pillowcase from the top, opened it so that it was a small and flat piece of material, then folded it to return it to the bag again.

"OK," he said, turning to Miss Parker and carefully removing his jacket from about her shoulders. "You need to lie down on this blanket."

"I'll never get up again," she remarked, eyeing the fact that the blanket hid a surface that could have rocks and other painful protuberances beneath its uneven appearance.

"It will be easier for me," Sydney told her, moving to her left side and wrapping an arm around her firmly to help her shift, "and if you pass out, you won't injure yourself any further in falling."

She grunted in pain and exertion as he pulled her once more to her feet, and then gave her steady support as she sank first to her knees and then rolled onto her back with a cry of pain.

"Hold on," he told her, still supporting her head, and then reached for the third bag – which he moved behind her head to serve as a pillow. He then went down on his knees next to her and pulled the other two bags close so that he could access their contents easily.

"C…cold," she shivered, wishing she could wrap her arms about herself but knowing better than to even try to move her right arm.

"That can't be helped at the moment," Sydney told her sympathetically. He caught her gaze tightly with his. "Ready?"

She swallowed hard but didn't flinch from his gaze. "Do it."

He studied the wood again to make sure when he took hold of it, he got a good purchase on it – and then grasped it and pulled it straight out with a sharp jerk without a word of warning. Miss Parker's shriek cut through the silence of the mountainside. "Crap, Syd!" she spat at him once she'd stopped panting in agony, "Warn a girl next time!"

Sydney was already busy. "And have you tense up and make it hurt even worse? I don't think so." He already had her blouse unbuttoned and had moved it aside to press one of the tight little wads of pillowcase pressed into the wound to staunch the bleeding. He reached into his pocket for the vodka. "I'm afraid I'm not quite done yet. I need to at least try to sterilize the wound and the bandage."

The grey eyes focused on the tiny bottle. "Oh hell."

"Hang on," Sydney counseled and twisted the top off, and then tipped a healthy portion of the clear liquid into the wound under the bandage. Miss Parker gave a low, tearing groan and grit her teeth at the stinging on top of the outright agony and glared up at him. Sydney's eyes clearly showed his regret before he looked away and dumped a little more of the alcohol onto another wadded bandage and replaced the one stopping the bleeding with the alcohol-soaked one. He twisted the top back onto the bottle to conserve what little remained and slid it back into his pocket before reaching for another rolled wad.

"At least you c…could have l…let me d…drink the rest," she complained.

"Sorry," he replied, sounding anything but. "I may need it for later."

"I s…swear, your m…m…middle name is T…Torquemada."

"'Sticks and stones,'" he quoted at her. "At least it's over." He smiled back down at her. "That part of it, anyway."

"I s…suppose I've had this c…coming for sh…shooting you in the l…leg b…back when, haven't I?" she asked, teeth chattering now with shock and cold.

Chestnut eyes touched her in mild surprise. "I'd long since forgotten about that, Parker, you know that," he chided gently and pressed yet another wad over the first two. "Hold this," he instructed her and brought her left hand over to press against the bandages while he reached for and unwound two more strips and tied them together. He wadded the two together and placed them in his lap. "You need to sit up now," he told her quietly and firmly. "I have to get that blouse off so that I can bandage you properly.

She bit her lip again and managed only to moan as he inserted his arms around her upper torso and pulled her up into a sitting position. As much as she would have liked to continue to lean into him, she forced herself to sit erect so that he could gently pull her blouse down from both shoulders and completely off her left arm.

"I'm going to be moving your right arm a little," he told her apologetically, "and it's going to hurt."

"H…hurry," she shivered at him and then drew in a hiss of pain when he shifted her right elbow just enough so that he could slip his hand between her arm and her torso. The first strip was quickly made fast around her upper chest, above her bosom. He pulled her left hand away from the bandage to make sure the binding seated the bandage properly over the wound, and then wrapped another loop of bandage quickly up over her shoulder and then back around on top of the first in a sort of figure eight configuration.

"I'd rather you not have to wear this," Sydney began, drawing her bloody blouse back up her right arm and then helping her left arm back into the sleeve, "but you'll need all the covering and warmth you can get when the sun goes down and it starts getting colder." He buttoned the blouse quickly and efficiently for her, carefully not looking at her face so as to preserve her modesty even just a little, and then reached for the small, flat, opened pillowcase. "Let's see how well this goes," he stated, easing her right arm up and out of her waistband and into position across her stomach, again ignoring the sudden intakes of breath that told him that moving that arm was still agony for her.

He used the opened pillowcase to catch the weight of the arm and hold it close to her body while draping the corner over her left shoulder so as not to put any strain on an already broken right collarbone. He tsked to himself silently as, after leaning her into him so he could reach around her, he noted that she was slender – too slender, really – and that the pillowcase easily reached itself at her back to be tied tightly into place.

"There," he declared as he finished tucking stray edges and corners into place and reached once more for his pillowcase bags. He dragged out another fleece blanket that he then draped about her and drew it closed over her bound arm. "All done."

It was as if his words released her – as if she finally had his permission to stop pretending to be strong and stoic any longer – and Miss Parker suddenly slumped forward again into Sydney's startled arms in a dead faint.


	5. Making Do

Chapter Five – Making Do

Debbie slumped in her seat at the small restaurant, waiting for her father and Sam to come back with their food. It had been a little exciting at first to think that she was on the run from the Centre, just like Jarod – and then from listening to the quiet conversation between Sam and her dad, reality had set in. Now she was a little scared and looking all around her for the least sign of sweepers closing in on them.

"You look very guilty," Sam's voice sounded from behind her, making her jump. "Stop swiveling your head around in circles like a weathervane."

"I can't help it," she complained, relieving him of her order of French fries and hamburger. "I keep thinking…"

"Part of getting away clean and staying that way is making a point of looking inconspicuous – looking like everybody else – blending in," Sam instructed her as he sat down next to her. "Look around you – slowly this time – and watch everybody else in this restaurant. Are they all twisting their necks to and fro, like you were?"

"No," Debbie answered after a moment.

"So to blend in so that nobody would pick you out…" he continued, obviously urging her to finish his statement.

"…I need to stop twisting my neck," she finished obligingly and then sighed deeply. "But how will I know if sweepers have found us if I don't…"

"Leave that to your dad and me, Short Stuff," Sam told her around his first bite of hamburger.

"Leave what to you and me?" Broots asked, coming into the conversation late and depositing the three large sodas on the table.

"Picking out the sweepers staking us out – if they exist," Sam replied, reaching for the only cup with obviously clear liquid inside. Just to make sure, he cast an expert eye around the restaurant, looking for the telltale signs that someone was watching and trying to look deliberately away at just the right times. "We're clear for now."

"You're sure?" Debbie's eyes were big as she slowly pushed a French fry into her mouth.

"Trust me, I've been at this a long time," Sam smiled at her and then shot a knowing look at Broots. "She doesn't just take a person's word for things, does she?"

The balding computer tech shook his head. "She's thirteen, and she lives close to the Centre. Taking a person's word for things isn't a great thing to do in that situation."

"You have a point." Sam's eyes kept sweeping the restaurant out of habit. "I still can't understand why…"

Broots shook his head and tipped it silently in Debbie's direction, and Sam took the hint and didn't finish his wondering statement about why Lyle's goons hadn't been after them yet. Debbie was already pretty spooked – it wouldn't do any good at all, and might actually attract attention, if she were genuinely frightened.

"Eat up, Sweet Pea," Broots urged his daughter on. "We need to be at the boarding gate an hour before our flight leaves – and that gives us exactly…" He checked his wristwatch. "…twenty minutes to eat and get to the United terminal."

"I'm hurrying," she assured him and then slurped long and hard on her drink. "You don't want me to throw up again, do you?"

Sam's gaze impacted Broots' with alarm. "No barfing on this trip, Short Stuff," Sam grumbled. "Being inconspicuous demands that you not gross anybody out – especially me – and especially like that."

Debbie giggled, and Broots sighed. He wasn't quite used to the bantering Sam and Debbie indulged in – and he wasn't quite used to the idea that his daughter was perfectly comfortable bantering fearlessly with one of the most lethal sweepers the Centre had ever employed. It was one thing to have his daughter calling his boss on a Saturday to see if she was interested in going mall-hopping in Dover – quite another to watch her verbally sparring with Sam without a single worry.

At the door of the restaurant, a dark-suited man glanced in at the three at a back table and then backed out quickly. He pulled a cell phone from a pocket and punched in a number and waited. "Yeah, it's Vinny. Found 'em." He listened for a moment. "In New York – at the airport."

oOoOo

"So, no signs of sabotage?" Hendricks asked as Jarod walked over to one of the leather easy chairs in front of Benning's desk, behind which he'd been carrying out the business of the foundation that day.

"Nothing at least from the ground crew at La Guardia," Jarod replied with a shake of the head. "I'm still looking into things however – I got a lead right after I got back from New York that I'd like to follow up on yet."

"If it truly WAS an accident," Hendricks asked frankly, "how much is it going to take before your suspicions are put to rest?"

Jarod let his dark chocolate gaze rest on his nominal superior, now that Carl Bennings was missing and presumed dead, and found himself studying the man's features and the way so many emotions seemed to flit past behind his business-only façade. He couldn't be entirely sure, but it seemed that Carl's absence had made him act more decisive, more secure – and he wasn't comfortable with the ease in which Hendrick's had just stepped into Carl's shoes. Granted that this was an emergency, and that the stockholders wouldn't be voting in a new CEO until Carl's death could be confirmed – there just was something about the entire situation that smelled 'off,' and Jarod wasn't going to be content until he'd at least identified what that was.

"When I continue to find nothing that suggests foul play, no matter how deep I dig or how much I pay my informants," Jarod said darkly. "At least as long as it takes to find Carl – or his body…"

Hendricks nodded. Jarod's reputation had preceded him – Carl had bragged about hiring one of the most tenacious and ingenious men to dedicate themselves to the corporate security field. He could expect no less than an exhaustive investigation into the causes of the crash, once the wreckage was found – an investigation that would most likely rival if not beat the NTSA in detail and documentation.

"Fair enough," Hendricks said, leaning back in the comfortable chair. "What's next in the investigation then?"

"Word of a contract killer having called to express an intent to collect the reward when Carl was found dead in New York," Jarod shrugged. "But since I happen to know that Carl made it safely onto the United flight – because I watched him board the plane and the plane take off from the observation deck myself – it could be that there was some miscommunication as to exactly WHEN the hit was going to take place."

"Really?" Hendricks leaned forward, fascinated. "Where do you manage to find all these people with all this obscure information?"

Jarod smiled, but there was no levity behind the expression. "That's why Carl is – was – paying me the big bucks," he deadpanned. "I have resources that few others have."

"When can I expect a report sitting on my desk?"

Jarod had to admit that Hendricks was borrowing a page from Carl Benning's play book: the use of brutal honesty when it came to asking the hard questions. "Within twenty-four hours after they find the wreckage."

"You do realize that there's a storm front moving into the area that might make searching for the crash site problematic…"

The corner of Jarod's eye began to tick – the only sign that Jarod felt any pressure at all. "I heard the weather report on the commuter flight back," he admitted. "Still, they have a while yet before it actually begins to snow up there – the National Guard insider that I contacted said that they would be conducting the search using night vision until the visibility became too compromised by precipitation."

"What will that mean for any survivors up there, if they aren't found before then?" Hendricks asked with a worried tone.

"It means that if they don't have some sort of shelter, and some way of keeping warm, anybody who managed to survive the crash will freeze to death before they're found," Jarod intoned darkly.

oOoOo

Bennings halted his slow descent of the mountainside – he could hear the sound of water tumbling over rocks below him. Why bother going any further down a mountainside he'd just have to climb back up when he already knew that water would be available when it was needed.

In his arms, the little girl gave a sniff and wound her arms just a little tighter around his neck in much the same way she had when they both had heard the sharp shriek from above. Bennings had had to force himself not to flinch at the thought of how it must have felt to have the old man pulling that nasty piece of wood from that pretty lady's shoulder. Still, to have the little girl shift in his arms reminded him that it would be best to return to the others and maybe lend a hand in getting that wounded woman back to the relative shelter of the dislocated first class cabin.

A quick look upwards told him everything he needed to know. What little of the sky could be seen through the towering pine was getting darker and more foreboding. The air had a decided chill about it now – and a smell that suggested moisture. Either it was preparing to rain or to snow, depending on what the temperature was when things began to fall.

He turned to begin the long, steep climb back up the mountainside and then hesitated at the sound of footfalls and a soft voice to his right and slightly downhill. The little girl heard it too – she snuggled closer to him, as if to protect herself from any strangers. "Hello?" he called out into the wilderness.

"I'm coming," a woman's voice answered him, and there was an increased sound of footfall as whoever it was made their way up to him. It took a bit, and several more exchanged calls, and then he could make out the white uniform of one of the United stewardesses making her way up to him. As she finally came out from behind a tree, he could see that her face had that now-familiar shocked and dazed look. "Did you press the call button?" she asked incongruously.

"Are you OK?" he asked, looking her over quickly. Her left arm hung at an odd angle, and her face looked as if it had seen several objects impact it with some force. Her short, blonde hair looked as if a windstorm had styled it, and then used the blood from her facial cuts and abrasions to mousse it into place. The white of her uniform was filthy and torn in places.

"You don't belong in the third class section," she told him with a tone of complete authority. "You'll need to return to your seat in first class."

"Why don't you show me the way?" he asked kindly. The poor woman must have been out of her mind – but he wasn't going to distress her any further until he could get her back to where there was a psychiatrist who MIGHT be able to snap her out of it. He glanced quickly at the embossed nametag pinned to her uniform tunic. "C'mon, Natalie. I know it's up there…" He pointed up the hill in the direction of the log where he'd left Sydney and Parker.

"Very well," she replied in a tone of mild frustration. "Follow me." She began to scramble up the mountainside quickly.

"Not too fast," he reminded her, "I'm carrying a child."

She looked behind him and then slowed her pace so that they were more or less climbing the mountainside side by side. It seemed to take much longer than it had taken to walk down the mountainside, but eventually he could make out a head of silver hair through the trees, behind a fallen log. "We may need to help my friends," he told Natalie kindly. "I know they're first class passengers too…"

"What is this, let's go on a stroll day?" Natalie shook her head in exasperation. "Passengers!"

"Sydney!" Bennings called up the mountainside, grateful to see the silver head turn and try to follow his voice to the source. "There's water."

Sydney busied himself behind the log so that by the time Bennings and Natalie panted up to him, Miss Parker was resting on her blanket with her feet aimed up the mountainside. Bennings looked down at the pale and unconscious woman. "How is she?" he asked in concern.

"As good as can be expected," Sydney replied without any real enthusiasm. "I got the wood out of her shoulder and have the wound bandaged, but she's lost a lot of blood – and it's getting cold…"

"Now here you go," Natalie shook her head and just look more frustrated. "This is what happens when people don't stay in their seats when we hit turbulence…"

Sydney's gaze connected with Bennings', the unspoken question obvious. "We found her stumbling around down below," Bennings explained. "She still thinks we're in the air en route, I think… Broken left arm too."

The psychiatrist gave a short nod even as he closed his eyes. He was in no shape to be handling intensive therapy for anybody – but it looked as if he had at least two critical psychiatric patients, when he finally had the time and energy to get around to them. First things first, however. "You say there's water?"

"I could hear it below me," Bennings answered, moving to the fallen log and finally sitting down and resting the child on his knee again. He'd never known that one small child could get SO heavy. "And we really can't stay here. I think I felt a raindrop or a snowflake a couple of minutes ago, and we need to get to shelter."

"Back up the mountainside, into our old seats." Sydney knew it was the only shelter in the area. "I don't know…"

"Come along, you two," Natalie pulled at Bennings' free arm with her good hand. "You need to go back to your seats…"

"Just a moment, and we'll be along," Bennings promised and then turned to Sydney. "If you can carry the kid, I'll get Parker. Natalie can take the supplies…" He gasped as another spot of thoroughly chilled moisture hit his cheek. "We need to move – now!"

Sydney nodded and climbed slowly to his feet. "Give me the girl…"

"You go to Sydney now," Bennings instructed his little handful when she tried to cling. "I need to carry Parker now. Sydney can carry you."

"Come to me, ma petite," Sydney said gently, holding his hands out to her.

The girl finally loosened her stranglehold on Bennings' neck and reached out to Sydney. The moment Sydney had the child, Bennings rose to his feet and beckoned to Natalie. "We need you to bring these with us," he explained in a gentle voice, bending and picking up all three pillowcase bags with one hand. "They're our blankets for the evening."

"Certainly, sir," Natalie accepted the bags without fuss, only frowning when her left arm refused to respond to her control. The pain caused a quick flicker of almost panic in her face – an expression that quickly died back to the shocked and dazed look. "Are you almost ready? I don't have all day, you know…"

"Just a moment." Bennings again caught Sydney's gaze and knew the psychiatrist was listening to everything the stewardess was saying – and was aware of her condition. Reassured, he bent over Miss Parker's still form and carefully gathered her up into his arms. "All right, Natalie. Let's go."

Slowly, carefully, the three began to make their way back up the mountainside to the shelter of the wreckage – and their only hope of survival.

oOoOO

Phil was not a happy camper – and he wasn't exactly sure what he could do about the situation.

The call from Vinnie, one of his subordinates, had confirmed what he'd expected – that the rest of the team that had been assigned to Miss Parker had come together and were heading out to render her assistance, if possible. After a long day in which the only thing that had become known was that the team members were almost as good at staying under the Centre radar as their prey was, this sighting had been what Phil considered substantial progress.

But communicating that progress to his boss and getting orders on just what to do about it had been more difficult than he'd anticipated. When Lyle had climbed into his Centre-issued sedan early that morning, after hearing about the crash, he had ordered his personal sweeper to handle all calls for him in his absence – that he'd be back in approximately thirty-six to forty-eight hours, and to not try to contact him. Phil had expected that he would be within cell phone reach during that time, but four calls had only managed to leave four voicemails.

Then there had been the calls from the FBI – from what he'd been able to gather from the agent on the phone, there were suspicious circumstances surrounding the car bombing that had taken out Mr. Raines. The FBI desperately wanted to interview Mr. Lyle as soon as humanly possible. It was hard to explain to them, therefore, that the new Chairman of the Centre had suddenly taken it into his head to vanish for a two-day hiatus in the midst of such chaos. It made Lyle look bad, and by extension, it made him look bad too.

Unhappily, Phil had decided that Lyle had genuinely meant what he'd said – that he expected him to 'handle' all calls. He had called the Salt Lake City Centre affiliate and placed an order for a pair of sweepers to be on hand when the plane carrying Sam and Broots and the kid landed – and ordered them to keep their distance, but report on their activities. The FBI he simply told the truth – that he didn't know where his boss was, couldn't get a hold of him, and they'd just have to wait.

Vaguely he remembered how Willy used to come down to the sweepers' lounge and occasionally unload his frustrations at his boss – even Sam, Miss Parker's personal sweeper, had occasionally voiced reservations about her attitudes and actions from time to time. Now HE understood what it meant to be a personal sweeper to the power elite of the Centre. These exalted people sometimes did things that made no sense to normal people – and their personal assistants were expected to anticipate the extraordinary, to fill in, to maintain the presence even when the authority himself had made himself scarce. It was this expectation of surrogacy that evidently merited the hefty pay increase that came with the assignment – as well as the risk that what he did while the boss was away wouldn't be acceptable, and that he would bear sole responsibility for any foul-ups as a result.

Were it not for the fact that Lyle was already well-known for his flights of unreasonable temper – among other, casual actions the cold-blooded execution of a sweeper who had apparently innocently compromised one of Lyle's schemes – Phil would be planning to have a word or three with his boss. He could already feel the fact that an extended working relationship with the Mad Dog of the Centre would result in an ulcer. But he was in it for the long haul – he'd always wanted power and prestige, and now he had it.

God help him.

oOoOo

Lyle flushed the condom down the toilet and turned on the hot water in the shower to wash away the perspiration his first encounter with his Prey had caused. It was part of the ritual – the first taking after capture could give no harm to either Prey nor Hunter, being a proactive celebration of Life. He had no doubt that if only Cherry Fu could understand the terms and importance of her sacrifice, she would have willingly submitted to him. But then, it was her struggling against the inevitable that always resulted in a very satisfactory first climax – one he was loathe to miss out on.

It was time, now, to cleanse and give his Prey a chance to ponder the role they were going to be playing. As a part of the ritual, he had whispered the future into her ear even as he pressed himself into her over and over again, hearing her understanding in the sobbing breaths that were the only sound she could make past the duct tape that covered her mouth. She'd tried to scream when he'd described the ritual meal that would be the culmination of the Hunt, her beautiful ebony eyes filled with terror and the very beginnings of an acceptance of her own imminent death.

Lyle stepped into the shower and let the nearly scalding water flow over him, from the top of his head down his entire body. He would use no soap – this was Nature taking the impurities of the world away from him, cleansing him so that his next encounter with her would be as fresh and new as the last. It was now that he could review the delicious shot of pleasure it had been to slowly use the scalpel to cut every last stitch of clothing from Cherry's body, from her jeans and her tank top to her pantyhose. How careful he had been, not to allow the razor-sharp edge of the scalpel to touch the skin beneath the material – using his other hand to stroke and pull the material a safe distance away for cutting.

Cherry Fu was as much of a delight as he had expected – and there was no reason to believe that he wouldn't be able to enjoy her for the entire night before bringing her life to an end. He hadn't had the luxury to do that for SUCH a long time – so many times, lately, his efforts had needed to be rushed, his pleasures curtailed. That bastard Raines, he thought sourly at first and then smiled. Never again would Raines tell him that he couldn't spend time doing what he wanted. He'd shown him…

Finally his skin was red and sensitive and sore – and clean. Lyle turned off the water and stepped from the bathtub, letting the water drip from his skin rather than using a towel. Towels were superficial, after all – a man-made convenience that would only pervert the Hunt. The sensation of cool air on heat-sensitized skin was arousing. Already he was getting hard again.

He smiled to himself as he walked back out of the bathroom and gazed fondly at the naked woman on his bed. She'd had enough time to think. It was time for Round Two.

oOoOo

"Sure, Short Stuff – you can have the window seat." Sam stood aside and let Debbie move past him to the seat next to the little porthole in the side of the plane. "Not that you're going to be seeing much – it should be dark very soon now."

"Thanks, Sam." Debbie curled coyly onto the hulking sweeper's arm for a short moment and then turned back to watch the activities on the tarmac below. At the window seat on the other side of the plane, Broots was adjusting his seat belt. This was the same route that Sydney and Miss Parker had been flying, except that their flight was to have terminated in San Francisco, and not Salt Lake City. He wasn't entirely comfortable flying in the best of times – right now it was taking every last ounce of discipline he had to keep from throwing up with nervousness at the idea of another plane crash.

"Damn!" Sam swore softly as he looked over Debbie's shoulder.

"What's wrong?" Broots asked immediately.

"They know where we are," Sam stated flatly. "That means they know where we're going." He pointed out the window at the man in a dark suit gazing steadily at the plane.

Debbie followed his gaze and then turned to look at him with stricken eyes. "Does that mean that they're going to kill us?"

"I'm not sure yet," Sam answered honestly, his gaze moving from the young woman next to him to her father leaning over the seat backs to see what it was that he had seen. "Frankly, I have a feeling that if they wanted us dead, we wouldn't be sitting here talking about it."

"What are we going to do?" Broots asked as he took his seat again, his voice having risen an octave, even though it had gotten considerably softer. Sam could barely hear it over the engines beginning to wind up.

"For one thing, we're going to have to disembark separately," Sam stated, relaxing back into his seat and thinking hard. "They're looking for us traveling together, no doubt – and I'll bet you they think we haven't spotted them yet. They're usually a whole lot more circumspect than this." He snorted silently. "The sweeper I just caught a glimpse of must be a new recruit – wet behind the ears. No doubt his more experienced partner is somewhere a bit less conspicuous and pissed as hell at his partner being out in the open… Yup!" Sam chuckled to see a second dark-suited man practically drag the first into the shadows of the undercarriage of the terminal. "Oh! It's gonna be shit-duty roster for you for the next month, I bet…"

"You mean, I'm going to have to walk out of here all by myself?" Debbie sounded very frightened now.

"We'll have you in a disguise by then, kiddo," Sam soothed her. "We have four hours to figure out ways to alter our appearance. They've got the descriptions of what we looked like when we got on the plane – we need to make sure we look considerably different when we get off."

"Change of clothes?" Broots asked quietly.

Sam nodded. "I'll take care of that once the plane is in the air. I've studied the schematics of 747s several times over the years for various reasons – I know where the access hatch is to the luggage compartment, and I know what our bags look like."

Broots and Sam exchanged a concerned look even as Debbie rose from her window seat to move across the aisle to her father's side to huddle. "This isn't a game we're playing, Sweet Pea," the bald man consoled his daughter. "We can do this, but we have to be very, very careful from now on. You will do exactly what I or Sam tell you from now on, understood?"

Debbie nodded and felt her father's hands move to fasten her seatbelt as the plane began to move forward and away from the terminal.

oOoOo

Sydney's foot slipped on the steep mountainside, and he felt the little girl in his arms tighten her hold around his neck to the point that she almost cut off his breathing. "We're OK, ma petite," he soothed breathlessly, looking up and ahead of him to where the section of fuselage lay visible through the trees. "We're almost there."

Ahead of him and a little higher up the slope, Bennings continued to plod on with Miss Parker in his arms, holding her so that her injured right side was not pressed against him at all. It was the sight of her head occasionally lolling off the man's shoulder that was powering Sydney's drive up the mountain – he needed to be there when she awoke again. It was his place, to be at her side.

Behind him he could hear the stumbling and soft muttering that was Natalie. For her sake, he was glad that she was still behind him; because he was very aware that in her state, she was perfectly capable of just wandering off. He carefully avoided looking to his left – toward the smoldering mess that was the rest of the back of the airplane – he had to keep his own head clear and emotions in check if he were going to be the psychiatric anchor for the only survivors of this horror. They were five out of how many, he wondered.

Slowly, carefully, Bennings led the way through the dangling wires and torn strips of metal until they were back inside the cabin – back where they could quite literally follow Natalie's orders and take their seats again. Bennings waited for Sydney to catch up to him and move the arm between a pair of seats out of the way before he deposited Miss Parker so that she was lying across both seats, her legs dangling out into the aisle. Sydney moved out of the way and back a row to deposit his own little burden into a seat.

"You can let go now," he told her gently when she refused to unlink her arms from around her neck. "You'll be safe here…"

"We can't have this," Natalie scolded, frowning at the way Miss Parker's legs blocked the aisle. "In case of emergency…"

"Will you shut up?" Bennings snapped finally. "It already IS an emergency, lady…"

"That isn't helping," Sydney chided immediately. "As long as she doesn't do anything harmful, leave her be." The child, however, responded to the scolding tone and withdrew her arms from his neck, choosing instead to huddle back into the corner of the seat by the window, drawing her legs up underneath her and curling into a tight little ball.

Sydney took advantage of the situation and rose to step over to the stewardess. "Miss?" His eyes focused on the nametag before looking back up into her smudged and pale face. "Natalie? There's a young passenger there who has lost her mother who needs your assistance. Can you help?"

Natalie's face lost just a little of it's shocked and dazed expression, and the woman moved past Sydney to sit down next to the little girl and reach out to her.

"What now?" Bennings asked, the purpose that had compelled him forward having been spent, leaving him confused and feeling helpless.

"I don't know about you," Sydney replied, moving to Miss Parker's side and quickly checking the bandage on her shoulder for signs of renewed bleeding and heaving a sigh that it looked just the same as it had the last time he'd checked, "but I have a broken arm to set and maybe a little talking to do to get a couple of ladies to come to themselves a bit more. If it's really going to storm, you might want to go see if you can find anymore survivors – if they're out there, I seriously doubt they'll survive both the cold of the night AND a storm…"

Bennings straightened, already feeling better for having been given another purpose. "I'll see if I can find anymore alcohol or blankets while I'm out there too…" he nodded as he moved toward the opening at the back of the section.

"Just be careful," Sydney warned him, "and come back before it gets completely dark. We'll need to have all of us huddle together for warmth tonight, I'd imagine – and you don't need to get yourself lost in the middle of a plane wreck."

"I won't be gone long," Bennings promised as he made his way through the obstacle field toward the smoking debris field.

Sydney sighed and walked over to where Natalie had just dropped the pillowcase bags when she'd gone to take care of the littlest survivor. He dug through them until he found one more intact pillowcase and carefully opened it like he had before, pulled out a few more of the rolled strips of material, then turned. Natalie was sitting next to the little girl, her back straight and staring out the window in the fuselage at whatever lay just outside. The little girl remained curled up in the corner, her face turned to the window.

"Natalie," Sydney called gently, moving to the seat directly opposite the stewardess. "I would like to take care of your arm now, before you injure it anymore. Will you come over here, please?" As if controlled by remote, Natalie rose and walked over to Sydney. "Sit down in the window seat," he directed, and again she obeyed him without even seeming to understand what he was saying. He sat down next to her and tried to catch her gaze with his own without any success. "This may hurt a bit, but I need to see how badly your arm is broken. May I?"

There was a faint flicker in the depths of her gaze, but then she was turning slightly so that he could get better access to her left arm. Carefully he ran his hand down her sleeve, feeling the arm within the material. He moved past the elbow, toward the hand, and felt the movement of the entire lower arm find yet another pivot point. For the first time he heard her breathe in suddenly as the slight movement caused pain. "Sorry," he stated softly and began looking around for something the right length to which to splint the limb.

Eventually he stripped the arm cushion of one of the more demolished seats in front of him down to the metal and was able to pull it away entirely. It would be heavy, and it was slightly longer than he'd like, but it would have to do. He brought the metal lathing back and laid it in her lap, then took charge of the arm and laid it along the thin, narrow metal.

It took three of the strips to tie the metal securely to Natalie's arm so that it wouldn't keep exacerbating the break, and then the opened material was folded and cobbled into a sling to hold the weight more easily. "There," he sighed when finished. "Better?"

The stewardess' brown eyes flicked to touch his very briefly, and then she rose to return to her seat next to the little girl. Sydney sighed – he was tired, his vision was still blurred, and all he wanted to do right now was sleep. Instead, he dug into his pillowcase bags again and dragged out more of the fleece blankets. "Here," he said, tucking one around Natalie. "This will help for a while."

He drew another one around his own shoulders, finding the fleece added to his jacket made him much more comfortable. He carried one more over to Miss Parker and wrapped it around her legs as they protruded into the aisle. She didn't even stir at the movement. Sydney thought for a moment, and then carefully moved her so that he could insinuate his body between her head and upper torso and the seat. She moaned slightly, but didn't awaken. He tucked the blanket he'd taken for himself around them both and settled down to wait.

He'd done what he could for the time being. As much as he wanted to remain alert until Bennings returned, his eyes closed without volition – and finally he surrendered to slumber.

oOoOo

Jarod turned off the motor to his sports car and climbed from behind the wheel to lean on the front bumper of the car. He gazed all around him in the dim light of the dirty warehouse windows, searching for the person who had contacted him and asked for a face-to-face meeting. The warehouse district was a dangerous place after dark, so he wasn't too thrilled to be there right at twilight – but if what this man had to say had anything to do with what happened to Carl…

There was the sound of another car motor, and a set of headlights slowly approached him from the open entryway at the opposite end of the huge, empty building. About twenty yards away, the car stopped, the headlights died away, and the driver climbed from behind his steering wheel. "You Jarod Green?" came a thoroughly urban accented voice.

"Last time I checked," Jarod replied. "Listen, you asked for this meeting…"

The man walked half the distance between the two cars. "How do I know that you ain't one of Blair's men settin' me up, man?"

Jarod's chuckle didn't reach his eyes, and he straightened and began to close the distance. "If I were, do you think you'd still be standing there?"

"Good point." The man stood steady while Jarod moved to where he could see the man's face more clearly. "I understand you're lookin' for information about Blair and a contract on Carl Bennings."

"You understand correctly." Jarod's voice was pure business. "What do you have for me?"

"What do you have for ME?" the man asked in return. "I'm riskin' my neck talkin' to you – whatcha gonna do to make it worth my while?"

Jarod moved his hands slowly, so as not to spook his informant, and withdrew a thick envelope from his overcoat pocket. "When I hear what you have to say, this is yours."

"An envelope full of newsprint?" the man mocked. "I don't think so…"

Jarod pulled the flap of the envelope back and fanned out the thick wad of hundred dollar bills. "Trust me, my friend, I have neither the time nor the inclination to mess with you. If your information pans out, and I end up with enough to go to the police with and nail Blair's butt to the floor, there will be another envelope just like this one."

"Now you're talkin', my man," the informant smiled coldly and put out his hand.

"On the other hand," Jarod continued without making the slightest movement to hand over the envelope, "if I find out that it was YOU messing with ME… Leave it to say that you'll wish you'd never touched this money." The Pretender closed the flap and held the envelope up, still out of reach. "Now, just exactly what it is you have for me?"

The informant's beady eyes never left the thick envelope. "I got a name – Stoller, George Stoller. He's a gun for hire out of Daytona Beach, got a little hungry when he ended up floating some big IOUs in Atlantic City. Real talent – especially for getting in close to do the job." The informant pulled a manila envelope from his jacket. "This is everything Florida law enforcement has on the creep." He held out the manila envelope with one hand, and extended the other to receive the envelope of money.

"What proof is there that this Stoller accepted the contract?" Jarod hedged, neither reaching for the information nor extending the envelope of money.

"It's in the envelope – a tape recording of Stoller talking Dell Brody, Blair's second in command, setting up terms of payment upon delivery of proof of death." The envelope was held out just a little further.

"What's the last known location of Stoller?" Jarod demanded, still holding out.

"He was seen in New York City – at La Guardia, as a matter of fact."

Jarod felt the hair on the back of his neck rise. Finally he held out the envelope of money and exchanged it for the large manila envelope. "Keep in touch," he told the informant, oblivious to the delight that the man was displaying at once more fanning out the wad of hundred dollar bills. "You and I might be able to do business together again."

"Not fuckin' likely, man," the shorter man scoffed, stuffing the thick envelope into his jacket pocket. "I happen to enjoy breathin' – which ain't somethin' that folks what go cross Blair's path tend to keep doin'."

"How will I deliver the other half of your payment, then," Jarod asked with feigned innocence.

"Telephone number's in the envelope," the informant stated with a pointing finger. "What it will get you is an accountant, who will have an account number for you to deposit the rest at when the time comes."

Jarod nodded. "Good doing business with you then, Mr…"

"No name," the little man cut him off rudely. "Like I said, I enjoy breathin'." He backed away from Jarod and darted back into his car, revved the engine harshly and then backed away with squealing tires.

Jarod merely shook his head and walked at a leisurely pace back to his car. Once inside, he flicked on the interior light and opened the envelope – the first document in which was an eight by eleven glossy photograph of a man.

"Where are you, Mr. Stoller?" Jarod asked pensively and then threw the entire envelope and its contents onto the passenger seat to start his own engine and navigate a circle to head back out into the open air the way he'd come in. There wasn't much more he could do today – he'd head home, call Broots and find out what was going on with them, and wait with moving on this new information until morning.

Maybe by that time, they would have found the wreckage – before the storm hit.

As much as he tried not to, his mind threw up a vision of Sydney and Miss Parker huddled together for warmth in a blinding snowstorm, knowing there was no rescue in sight – and of Carl, shivering badly right next to them. He swallowed sourly. Such thoughts were enough to give a man nightmares.

oOoOo

The light was dimming fast, and Bennings' head and shoulders were drenched from the dusting of melted snowflakes over time – but at least he wasn't making his way back to the first class cabin empty-handed.

He'd looked everywhere he could think of, but he'd seen no signs of life amid the carnage of the burnt-out commercial class cabin. He could never have imagined seeing so many different ways to die – and he'd finally stopped genuinely looking as he'd walked through the debris and just listened. It was easier to listen for signs of stirring or a moan than to look down and see the dead eyes staring back sightlessly, the disembodied arms and legs and torsos, the charred flesh that filled his nose with an oily stink.

The snow was starting to fall harder, however, and he was shivering badly as he stumbled forward, his left hand filled with a slightly singed box marked "First Aid" and his right hand with a fur coat. It would keep somebody warm that night – probably the pretty lady who'd lost all that blood.

Bennings took a step and tripped, turning his ankle on something small and round and hidden in the ash – his hands skidding on the scorched ground and ending up finally face to face with a man, face filthy and charred on the chin. He glanced at the face and flinched as his stomach once more threatened rebellion – and then stared as the face moved and a moan came out of those cracked lips.

"Hey Mister!" Bennings dropped the first aid kit and the fur coat and began working at uncovering this new-found survivor from the tumbled seats that had nearly buried him.

"Help me!" The words were so weak as to be practically unintelligible, but the movement of clutter over the damaged body had obviously brought the man out of his stupor.

"I'm workin' on it," Bennings exclaimed and ripped and tossed and finally had the man completely uncovered – and then blanched at what he saw. Both legs were bent at wrong angles, the man's shirt had been blown clean away, so that the flesh was bare and charred in some places, and there was a very long and deep gash in the man's side that had obviously bled quite profusely. "I gotta pick you up," Bennings told the man sympathetically, "and it's going to hurt like a son of a bitch."

"As long as… you don't leave me here… to die…" the man wheezed.

Bennings dumped the first aid kit on the man's stomach and abandoned the fur coat before he bent and carefully lifted the man's body into the air. The man gave a mighty moan and went completely limp – and for a moment, Bennings wasn't sure whether he was still breathing or not. Finally he saw the tiny puff of mist from the mouth and nose that indicated warm breath into the chilled air, and he set off through the debris field once more carrying a survivor.

"Sydney!" Bennings called as he neared the first class cabin section. "Sydney!"

This one needed the older man's healing skills more than any of the rest of them had. Bennings could only hope that the old man's stamina was up to the task – and that the lump on the man's head wouldn't interfere with his being able to be the only medical help any of them were likely to get that night.

The breeze that had been gently wafting the snowflakes around as they fell softly began to grow stiffer, and darkness fell over the crash sight with the accompanying sound of the wind wailing through the limbs of the tall pine.


	6. Restless Night

Chapter Six – Restless Night

Sam tugged on the baseball cap Debbie was now wearing to lower the visor over her face. She'd already tucked her long hair up into it – combined with the oversized sports shirt she was now wearing, it would be hard to pick her out as a girl at all. Broots, too, had changed from the casual clothing he'd worn when he got on the plane into a natty suit so that he looked ever bit the businessman. Sam's change of clothing had turned him into a tourist on vacation – with jeans and polo shirt and duffel bag replacing his sports coat and dress trousers.

It was the best he could do for them in the short time he'd allotted himself in the baggage compartment – he didn't want to stay down there too long and attract attention. As it was, the stewards of the plane were frowning a little in confusion – it wasn't often that passengers changed their clothing during the flight. The discarded clothing had been carefully folded and made to fit into his already overfilled duffel bag. The decision had been to let Debbie continue to carry her dark blue tote, but for Broots to take over custody of Sam's briefcase to finish off his disguise as a businessman. In fact, it was Broots who would take off without the others, disembarking alone and meeting up with Sam and Debbie at the car rental booth in one half hour.

Luggage stowed overhead once more, and seatbelts fastened, all that was left for the three of them to do was to survive the landing and get the hell off the plane without catching the eye of the sweepers that were no doubt waiting for them in the terminal. Debbie was once more sitting next to Sam, and her nervousness was palpable. "We're going to be fine," the sweeper bent to his companion. "Just pretend I'm your dad and that we're here to have a grand old time – and that you're tired and want to get to your hotel."

"I'm scared," she whispered back, her knuckles growing whiter in her lap as the lights on the ground grew closer.

"I know you are, Short Stuff. Just hang in there, though – and don't do anything suspicious. Remember…"

"Blend in, I know," she finished his statement for him. Debbie took a deep breath and tried to let it slow down her frantic heartbeat. She bent forward a little, so that she could see her father across the aisle.

"Remember, he's not related to you right now," Sam nailed that too. "You can't afford to keep looking at him anymore, Deb. He's a stranger until we meet at the rental desk."

"What if they figure out who we are anyway?" she wanted to know.

Sam's expression grew hard. "Then we'll just have to take care of the situation the hard way," he said without any expression in his voice. "Either way, we'll handle it."

The sweeper looked down when he felt a much smaller hand slip into his for comfort, and he gave the hand a small squeeze. "We're going to be fine, kiddo," he soothed for the twentieth time in the last hour. "Just fine."

Debbie closed her eyes as the wheels of the aircraft finally touched back down to earth and rumbled them down the runway. She could do this, she told herself over and over again. She could pretend, just as good as Jarod could.

Honest.

oOoOo

The wind howled eerily through the pine trees and would occasionally push another puff of snow around the corners of the detached cabin. Already a second set of blankets had been distributed to each of the survivors, who were now mostly huddling against the wall of the fuselage in shivering pairs for warmth.

It had taken work, but the stewardess Natalie had finally been convinced to take the still nameless little girl up into her lap and hold her close. Neither of them had been eager to be close to anyone else, but eventually the prospect of sharing body heat and staying a little bit warmer was too much to resist. Bennings was on the floor lying next to the latest survivor find – the man was simply too badly injured to have sitting up. Sydney had eased Miss Parker down to a sitting position on the floor below the window and wrapped the two of them tightly together in the blankets allotted them. She had roused briefly, but quickly fallen back to sleep upon coming to rest on Sydney's chest.

It was dark now – dark and desperately cold.

"We'll have to block off that end of the plane," Bennings called to Sydney, his teeth chattering. "We need to keep the wind out of here."

"We'll have to see about making a fire in the morning too," Sydney replied, his teeth chattering as badly as Bennings'. "We can clear a spot on the floor, maybe bring in some small piece of sheet metal…"

"When it's light out again," Bennings agreed. "If we live through this."

"We'll live through this," Sydney stated with as much vehemence as he could muster. "We can't afford to let ourselves doubt that. Doubt can kill just as quickly as the cold."

"Sydney…" Miss Parker's voice was soft, obviously not meant to carry far at all.

"I'm here, Parker." He tightened his arm about her waist and with the other hand adjusted the blankets so that all but just her eyes and forehead were covered.

"What are we going to do if they can't get out into the storm and find us?" she asked with a shiver and pressed herself as tightly against one friend she'd had nearly all her life – the man she'd more than once wished had been her father.

"We'll make do right here until they DO find us," he replied, leaning his cheek against her forehead as if that would help keep her warmer. "There isn't a whole lot more we can do than that, Parker."

"You don't suppose that either Lyle or Raines is responsible for…"

Sydney shook his head quickly. "I honestly don't see either of them willing to kill over a hundred innocent people just to get to the two of us," he told her honestly. "I mean, neither of them would think twice about killing one, maybe two – but to take down an entire 747 filled with people sounds like overkill, even for them."

She lay still for a long moment, processing the logic in her old friend's statement. "If we make it out of here…"

"WHEN we make it out of here…" he quickly corrected her.

"…what do we do about Jarod in San Francisco?" she continued her thought, ignoring his correction.

"It will be at least a day or so before any of us are released from the hospital," he replied, thinking through the situation. "More than likely, they'll want to hang onto you considerably longer than they'll want to keep me. I can call the hospital in California and consult with the psychiatrist in charge of the John Doe, see whether I can give enough detailed description that he can tell me one way or the other and save us the trip."

"We should have thought of that before," Miss Parker commented between gritted teeth. "We could have saved ourselves time and money..."

Sydney shook his head. "And deny you of your chance to go dashing across the continent hunting Jarod again for the first time in months – and maybe avoid another t-board grilling in the process? C'mon now…"

She tried to chuckle and ended up sighing and shivering. "You know me too well, Syd," she commented softly and closed her eyes. She was silent for a long moment, her thoughts moving to something she'd been thinking about earlier. "Do you know what?"

Sydney had closed his eyes too, wishing he could help her get and stay warmer so that she could sleep peacefully. "What?"

"I'm glad you're here with me," she replied. "I don't know what it is, but I always feel safe and able to believe things will be OK as long as you're around."

Sydney's eyes opened in surprise. Miss Parker was miserly with her praise or compliments in the best of times. "Thank you, Parker," he eventually managed. He finally dared to kiss the forehead not far from his chin. "You'll be OK, you know…"

No, she didn't know such a thing – but it wouldn't hurt to let him think she accepted his reassurance despite that, if for no other reason than the glancing kiss that had warmed her heart at a time when she needed it desperately. Sydney's demonstrations of fondness were rare treasures never to be ignored. "I know." She listened carefully until she could almost hear the beat of his heart against her ear despite the howling of the wind and came to a decision. "When I was a kid, I used to be so jealous of Jarod…"

"Jealous? Why?" This was a new side of Miss Parker – one he'd so often wished would reveal herself to him, one he'd so often despaired of ever uncovering. Whether it was because she thought she was dying or not, she was unburdening her soul to him NOW – and he gave her every ounce of his attention.

"Because he had you – and you were always paying attention to him. Even when it was Jarod and Angelo and me crawling through the vents, I knew that your thoughts were on Jarod and nobody else." She turned her head slightly and pressed her cheek against his chest. "I always wondered what it would be like to have someone that interested in MY welfare. I mean Momma was dead, and Daddy didn't give a damn…"

"Shhhhh…" he soothed. "Don't think of those days," he advised her, moving to try to settle her closer to him so that he could share more of his warmth with her.

"I can't help it," she shivered again and pressed closer still. "You were always so calm and wise, and every once in a while, you'd be willing to make time for me and listen to me the same way you always listened to Jarod. Even though I knew Jarod was the most important thing in your world, I used to love it when I'd manage to finally get your full attention. Even if only for a minute or two, I could pretend I was your daughter – and that you actually cared…"

"I always cared, Parker," Sydney pulled her tighter still against him. "Never doubt that."

"I've spent the last years of my life treating you like dirt," she continued mournfully, "and I'm sorry…"

"Stop it, Parker," he said suddenly in a sharp whisper. She was giving up – and trying to tie up loose ends. He'd be damned if he'd let her just slip away like that. "You're going to be fine – we're both going to be just fine. We just have to hang in there – and keep believing."

"I'm not sure about that," she answered him softly, honesty winning out at last, "and I don't want to die without ever having said it."

"It's OK," he told her gently. "Sometimes you don't have to say…"

He could feel her head moving very slightly against him, negating what he'd been saying. "That's the way the Centre teaches us to be – to bottle things up, to never say the things that need saying more than anything else. I should have told you a long time ago how I felt – how… fond… I am of you…" It was hard, making herself vulnerable to him after all this time; but it was oh, so necessary!

"You may not have said the words, but I knew. I knew, and I felt much the same way, and I never said anything either." Sydney's eyes stung with tears he'd never allowed to get very close to the surface. "But since we seem to be placing our cards on the table, so to speak, you should know I've always thought of you as the daughter I never had. I've always cared about you veerrrry much. You've just made it very difficult to show to you for a while now."

She bit her lip at the idea that she'd never needed to pretend that Sydney cared after all – if only she'd known before now… "If we get out of here," her voice steadied and took on a note of determination, "you and I are going to start over again with a clean slate – and we're not going to play the game by Centre rules anymore."

"WHEN we get out of here," Sydney corrected her again. "We will survive, Parker. I won't allow anything else to happen." He kissed her forehead again. "Go back to sleep, ma petite cheri. I'll take care of you, and we'll both make it out of here – you'll see."

Slowly she relaxed as much as she could against him. Her inner voices had gone silent – and the loss would have been distressing had Sydney not been there. As much as she'd denied it for the greater share of her adult life, Sydney had been the anchor that had kept her sane for years now – and in this moment, in this horrible situation with no inner guidance to lean on, it was his steely confidence that they WOULD survive this nightmare that would keeping her from panicking. Neither of them had said the words, but their short and emotionally charged exchange had clearly communicated their mutual affection.

Miss Parker allowed herself to begin to doze, feeling more secure and loved than she had been in a very long time. Until the voices came back and began informing her life again, she'd trust in what Sydney insisted would be the truth. Although he'd lied and kept things from her before – always to keep his word to someone else given long ago – surely he wouldn't lie to her about THAT…

oOoOo

Erin pushed open her apartment door and flipped on the lights before turning and making sure the deadbolt was locked tightly and the security chain AND hinge were both in place. There had been several break-ins in the area in the past three months, and the chain and hinge were a final capitulation to an increased need for security. Getting home after eleven at night always made her a little nervous – and getting her door closed, locked and secured like that was always a relief.

There was a frustrated meow from the kitchen area, and the black and white cat who'd been her constant companion for the past three years darted out to meet her with his demands. "I know, McGyver, I know," she soothed at her pet, which hadn't had anything but his plentiful supply of dry kibbles for the better part of the day. She toed her work shoes off and stood for a moment in silent appreciation of her feet's freedom from constraint, and then ambled toward the kitchen.

With the cat contentedly feasting on his helping of canned food, she pulled a bottle of beer from the fridge and moved over to her answering machine. Odd, she thought to herself, Cherry was supposed to have called that evening – but there were no messages at all waiting for her.

Darn! Cherry had better have been in the library, doing research for the paper they were writing together, she thought to herself as she dialed her best friend's phone number from memory.

"Hi there!" came Cherry Fu's voice over the line. "I can't talk right now, but you know what to do." The beep that sounded was loud and obnoxious.;

"Say!," she responded to the machine. "Where are you? You were supposed to call me and tell me when we were going to meet tomorrow between classes. I don't care what time you come in tonight – call me!" She hung up the phone with some frustration.

She took a long swig from her beer bottle and flopped onto her couch, reaching over to the table for the remote and turning on the TV. A commercial was on, and one of the men in the commercial looked so much like Lyle that she just had to smile. She'd see him tomorrow too – provided Cherry didn't wig out on her and their paper. She felt a delicious shiver of anticipation run through her system – Lyle was special, she just knew it.

Her time with him the other night had been beyond all expectations. He'd been polite, gallant, witty to the point of being outrageously funny at times, knowledgeable and, above all, pleasant. He seemed quite conversant on a number of topics, some of which she'd only barely been able to keep up with him. He hadn't treated her like a child or an airhead – and his touch when he kissed her…

Erin sighed and slouched down even further. Lyle hadn't tried to seduce her outright, but his kisses had been very arousing. It was obvious that he knew exactly what to do to get all of her nerve endings firing on all cylinders – and yet, he'd held back. Just before she'd climbed into her cab, he'd given her a prim and almost innocent kiss that had shaken her to the bottom of her toes and only managed to make her all the more curious.

She took another long swig of her beer. She'd be with him tomorrow afternoon – maybe even tomorrow evening. She closed her eyes and let the feeling of being attractive even to such a sophisticated and worldly man make her feel warm and pretty. That he had money was obvious in the way he dressed and the way in which he'd not even flinched at the cost of the meal they'd shared. Such a change from the college boys who still were fighting acne and trying to look manly! Lyle didn't need to try – he was all man, and how!

For the first time since her breakup with Steve, Erin wondered what it would be like to spend the night with a man like Lyle. Would he be gentle – or passionate?

She drained her beer and turned off the TV in disgust at the lack of quality programming, and then rose to amble toward the bedroom. Would she invite him in here tomorrow?

It was enough to make her tingle with anticipation.

oOoOo

"Remember, just walk forward like always – don't look around." Sam's warning voice sounded in her ear and his big hand landed reassuringly on her shoulder as they finished the last leg of the walk through the corridor toward the arrival gate waiting area. Beneath his hand, he felt the young woman straighten just a bit and then move forward confidently, her eyes straight forward.

It didn't take much looking around to find the sweepers. There were two of them – one on one end of the waiting area, the other at the opposite end – and both of them were looking a little confused and more than concerned. So far so good, Sam felt a rush of satisfaction. Broots had already left the area with a brisk, business-like walk that Sam was certain he had borrowed from watching Mr. Lyle one too many times. Already the computer tech would be making his way to the rental desk to wait for them.

Debbie held her breath, but didn't let her nervousness show. She was grateful for Sam's hand on her shoulder, ostensibly a father's way of steering a teenager through the madness that was a greeting committee for just about everyone but them. He moved her past the baggage carousel and held her there for a moment, until the sweeper closest to them had his attention caught by another group of people coming through the glassed doors from the plane. Taking the opportunity and not questioning it, Sam turned Debbie and steered her from the waiting area and down the terminal.

"Is that it?" she asked sotto voce.

"Don't relax yet," he cautioned in a low voice, his hand still on her shoulder. "Keep moving."

The terminal was long, and finally he saw Broots standing at the rental car desk, signing a paper and getting ready to collect the key. He bent forward. "You need to go to the restroom," he directed, his hand on her shoulder lifting a finger and pointing.

"No, I don't," she complained.

"I need to check the perimeter before we can join your dad," he explained quickly. "Do as I say – and come out quickly!"

Debbie sighed and walked toward the door to the women's restroom as if it were the most normal thing in the world. She went into the first available stall and stood there for a minute, then walked out again and exited the restroom, wiping her hands on her pants as if they were still damp. Sam was next to her dad, and he nodded to her and tipped his head for her to approach.

Broots took the keys from the rental agent's hand and smiled his thanks. "That's it," he announced, and Sam caught Debbie's elbow so that they could move very quickly through the swinging doors out to where the rental cars all waited in their respective ports. "This one," he said, pointing to the car that had the same port number as the ticket the agent had given him. He opened the driver's door and pushed the button to unlock the other doors. "Get in."

Sam got into the front passenger seat, and Debbie into the back without a word. Broots tossed the briefcase over the driver's seat as he got in and had the engine running only seconds later. He backed out of the port and was down the drive in just moments, turning on his headlamps only as he neared the busy access road that led to the city streets.

"Do you think we got away clean?" he demanded of his sweeper colleague.

Sam was continuing to watch out the back window of the car, but noticed no cars jumping to come after them at any speed. "I think so," he answered slowly. "Make a circle of the terminal entrance, just to be sure. If we have a tail, we'll see."

Broots nodded and did exactly as Sam directed. The moments seemed to creep by almost as slowly as the traffic on the circle. Then: "We're clear," Sam announced with certainty. "Let's get the hell outta here."

"Getting the hell outta here – you got it," Broots repeated grimly and put on his signal to exit the circle and head for the city street. "The Hilton is just down the road about a quarter of a mile, according to the map site on the Internet I used," he announced as he made his left hand turn just as the light turned yellow – yet another precaution to see if anyone were following them.

Sam finally turned around in his seat. "Good. The sooner we can get into a room and get some rest, the better."

"What do we do now?" Debbie asked in a small voice. "We're here – now what?"

"Tomorrow we take a drive to Ogden, which is up in the Wasatch National Forest," Sam stated firmly. "I declare myself as a close family friend of one of the passengers on the plane and get myself on the search and rescue team."

"What about us?" she persisted, and even Broots turned to look at Sam questioningly.

"You two lay low in whatever hotel we find in Ogden," he directed in an ominous tone, "and your dad keeps an eagle eye on what goes on in the Centre mainframe. If a memo floats by with either of our names on it, you call me."

"And we pray the Centre doesn't already have representatives on that search and rescue team," Broots added grimly.

Debbie settled back against the cushion of the back seat and sighed. In this not-a-game they were playing, it seemed they were just getting a small respite before going back to this-is-dangerous. It wasn't a very comforting thought.

oOoOo

Clarence Evans was recovering from getting himself stinking drunk. This was as per usual, when he ended up in this part of the country.

And, as usual, he'd stopped on his way home at the Evening Star Motel and conned his old buddy Stu into letting him try to sleep it off in one of the budget rooms at the far end of the building. It was a pattern of behavior that went back for years, ever since the two of them had gotten out of the service at the same time. Stu got the job managing the motel, and Clarence became a traveling salesman. Clarence kept Stu supplied with free shoes, and Stu reciprocated whenever Clarence was in the area and had tied one on particularly tightly.

Normally, Clarence took the last room – the one on the end – but this night found himself dumped in the next to last room. Stu told him there was some couple who tended to make noise with their – ahem! – activities that had asked for the most remote room. Whatever the man had told Stu had been right – because there certainly WAS plenty of noise coming from the next room over.

The couple must have been indefatigable, for the rhythmic squeaking of bedsprings followed by the pounding of headboard against the wall had been going on for the better part of the night. It would only cease for short periods of time – maybe a half an hour or so, marked by the hiss of water running in the adjoining shower – before starting up all over again. And the moans and sighs that came through the paper-thin walls were eerie – if he didn't know better, he'd have sworn they were more from pain than ecstasy.

Clarence was temped to pound on the wall and demand quiet as the squeak of the bedsprings became the headboard once more pounding rhythmically just behind his head, but knew better. Stu had warned him that these people had tried to move somewhere so that they wouldn't bother anybody else – and after all, he WAS getting the room for free.

He rolled over on the bed and pulled the pillow over his ears. With any luck, the people next door would finally exhaust themselves soon. Surely they wouldn't be able to keep going at it ALL night, would they?

oOoOo

Jarod jerked himself awake and sat up straight in bed, the perspiration beaded on his forehead, his heart pounding madly in his chest, and dragging in huge, gasping gulps of air. It was the first nightmare of that intensity that he'd had in almost two years – and he knew immediately why he'd had it.

They were involved – Sydney, Miss Parker, the Centre and everything it represented. For the first time in three years, he was thinking of them, whether he wanted to or not, because their paths had crossed completely serendipitously. They hadn't found him – he hadn't left them any bread crumbs or clues to follow – he had found THEM.

After a very rough first year, when his temptation to put the "game" back into play had surfaced more times than he'd wanted to admit, he'd finally been able to start going through his days without wondering how she was or what his mentor was up to now. There was no picking up copies of Psychology Today to see if Sydney had published anything new – no tapping into think tank chat rooms to hear what the latest scuttlebutt about what the Centre was up to lately – no going to the library and picking up the latest edition of Securities Digest to see if Miss Parker's name was still being mentioned as often as it had before.

As he managed to get through each day without even thinking about them, his nightmares had slowly begun to abate. No more vividly reliving the day Lyle had murdered his brother, no more sweaty recollections of being flatlined and then revived, no more haunting echoes of Kenny's desperate screams when Damon had shot him. After a year of intense introspection and self-discipline, Jarod had left the Centre and everything it represented to him behind.

He'd thought.

But now they were back – lurking in the shadows of his mind and capable of popping into his thoughts at random – and he was discovering that burying a past didn't mean that the past had been dealt with, only obscured and deliberately locked away. The nightmare had proven that he'd been fooling himself – the emotions were just as alive and vital when it came to Sydney and Miss Parker as they ever had been. The thought of them, alive and perhaps injured, up on that mountainside – along with Carl, whom he considered another mentor and friend – was almost crippling. The thought of any or all of them dead on that mountain was too painful to even consider.

Shivering in the chill of the dark apartment, drenched in perspiration, Jarod rose and stumbled into his bathroom to turn on the hot water faucet and bathe his face repeatedly in the warm, flowing water. Bleary-eyed, he lifted his face and stared at himself in the mirror. He'd done himself no favors by forcing himself to forget, to bury all thoughts of the Centre and people he'd known most of his life. Like a festering wound, now that it was lanced by the reality of the situation, all the emotions he'd been hiding from were spilling out in a haphazard and almost uncontrollable manner.

Jarod sighed deeply and reached for his face towel. He wiped away the drips from his impromptu bath and rubbed his short hair for good measure, then threw the towel in the general direction of the hamper. It would be no good trying to get back to sleep for the rest of the night – the pattern of his nightmares was that once one got started, it would take nearly five hours of waking time before he could dependably go back to sleep and not expect to dive right back into the horror at the precise point he'd left it.

He walked through the dark apartment with the sureness of a blind man in his home and sought out the easy chair that he'd placed close to his balcony window. He drew back the drapes and seated himself in the chair to stare out at the Philadelphia skyline and the few stars that were bright enough to penetrate the light pollution. It wasn't something he wanted to do, but he knew he had to do. He had to pull out, examine, and find a place in his new life for old feelings and old friends, acquaintances, enemies – just what were they to him, anyway?

He'd start with the more difficult of the two.

His feelings for Sydney had always been conflicted. He had long held the old Belgian personally responsible for his nearly three decade long incarceration in the depths of the Centre – for his never being allowed to experience a snowfall, or know his family or even know if Sydney himself cared for him as anything more than just a human lab rat. And yet, after his escape, in their more relaxed telephone conversations, he'd begun to get glimmers of a kind of fondness in his mentor toward him – but it was something he'd never once tried to plumb, afraid that, like all other attempts to touch Sydney's heart before then, he would only experience rejection.

After all, he'd finally met and gotten to know his real parents. He'd spent several months with them before moving to Philadelphia – Charles and Margaret had changed their names and moved to a very small community in the mountains of Virginia to raise Joseph, as his clone had decided to name himself. But even then, in his heart, Sydney had been there first. In his gut, he'd always thought of Sydney as his first father-figure – and Charles had realized that very quickly into their relationship and not battled the inevitable. Charles hadn't even bothered to comment on the fact that when Jarod took on the job in Philadelphia, he'd taken the family name of his former mentor as his own rather than Charles' last name – although he'd been offered the excuse that the Centre might be looking for a Jarod Russell, but wouldn't be looking for a Jarod Green.

Even now, wishing there were some way he could comfort himself against the loss of his best friend, Jarod found himself wishing he could pick up his phone and call his mentor. Sydney had allowed the Centre to work incredibly cruel experiments upon him – and yet protected him almost fiercely at times before and been diligent and downright sympathetic after his escape. Had he been protecting his project, or a young boy he genuinely had feelings for? Had he continued to help him out of love and/or friendship, or out of guilt or a desire to once more ensnare? And if Sydney were dead on that mountain in Utah, would he ever get a chance to find out?

Miss Parker was a slightly less complicated issue. She was the yin to his yang, the huntress to his prey, the one person in the whole world who truly understood him – even better than Sydney did. He'd loved her when he was still very young, only to discover that the person she'd been in his youth had been schooled and trained out of her by the time she was grown. She'd become a worthy adversary, someone who had the talent to keep him on his toes or even, occasionally, surprise him.

He'd spent the first five and a half years of his freedom feeding her kernels of truth – about her mother, about the Centre, about the man who had raised her as her father – and in so doing, both alienated her and drawn her closer. In the end, there had been a trust between them that nobody – not even the two of them – fully understood. And in the end, it had been she that he'd run away from – she that he'd worked the hardest to bury in his past. It had been she who had turned her back on the option to walk away from the Centre and its horrific legacy, who had declared that the run and chase game they'd been involved in would necessarily continue ad infinitum.

Even having walked away from her, he couldn't leave her behind entirely. She was the reason that his relationship with Zoe had never completely come together – how could he be with one woman and continually dream of another? Zoe had understood – she'd been enough of a will-o'-the-wisp herself to know that Jarod was not the kind of man she'd ever be able to tie down, not even after her cancer went into remission. They could be friends – very good and close friends, even intimate – but nothing more.

So what would he do now, with these ghosts from his past haunting his present again?

For a very brief moment, he allowed himself to entertain the urge to catch the very next flight to Salt Lake City – to be there, to participate, to be among the first to know for sure. Hendricks would understand, certainly, that Jarod needed to be sure – to be there as bodyguard if, by some miracle, Carl managed to survive this ordeal. His direct superior didn't need to know that there were three people whose very beings would be of the utmost concern rather than just the one.

He would call Broots in the morning. That would be one thing he could do to assuage his drive to be doing something himself. Broots would know the latest news too – and from other just the media sources.

And the moment he had that, it would be time to set an intense manhunt into operations to uncover the whereabouts of George Stoller – and to investigate his modus operandi. If he hadn't taken a potshot of Carl at the airport, where would he have likely gone to take up position? Jarod ran his hand down his face – he was too tired to be doing this now. He needed his sleep.

He rose and shuffled back into the bedroom, hoping against hope that enough time had passed that he could get back to sleep and not dream.

oOoOo

Sam clenched his fist and struck the side of the mattress in futile frustration. He ached, but rest was eluding him. In the next bed, Broots snored away noisily – and in the adjoining room, he knew Debbie was out like a light as well – but after a couple of hours of only managing to barely doze, he was wide awake. It just wasn't fair.

He rose quietly and padded into the bathroom, closed the door before turning on the light, and then rummaged through his toiletries bag for the bottle of painkillers he'd bought at the drugstore on the way home from the hospital. They were good for taking the edge from his sore shoulders and neck only – if his headache bloomed much worse, he'd be in serious trouble.

He had a long drive ahead of him – to take the three of them north toward the Wasatch National Forest. He'd studied the maps on the plane and decided the best place to leave Broots and Debbie would be in Ogden, a town in the middle of the mountains. With any luck – and if his injuries didn't slow him down too much – he could be on a search and rescue team and on his way into the wilderness in thirty-six hours or so.

Thirty-six hours.

He turned the light off and left the bathroom to walk over to the window overlooking the parking lot of the hotel. Were they even alive, he wondered. If so, and if the weather was getting bad, as he'd heard, could they survive the days it would take until he got there?

Sam took a deep breath to calm himself. These were thoughts – questions – he didn't dare ask himself. Right now his sole concern had to be to get into the search and rescue process and get himself up onto whatever mountain that plane had plowed into – and get to a place where he could help them as quickly as possible. Doubts about whether Sydney or Miss Parker had survived had to be shelved for both his welfare and theirs. Thoughts like those were far too painful to entertain and a distraction from the task at hand.

Still, his shoulders slumped. It was dark – the beginning of the drive to the Wasatch National Forest was still hours away – and he was awake. Thoughts he knew he would be better not thinking were all that he had for company, and he didn't have either the energy or the determination to force them into the background. He could hide forever from the consideration of how he'd go on if he couldn't hear his boss' terse orders in his ears on an on-going basis. What would he do? He'd dedicated himself to being the best bodyguard, the best sweeper, for her that the Centre had ever seen – to lose Miss Parker would be to lose everything he'd worked so hard for.

He loved her, he realized, in his own way. It wasn't a romantic type of love – he certainly knew better than to fantasize about the two of them making any kind of a life together in a family sort of way. But it was a love that had seasoned and deepened over the years – a love built of mutual respect and understanding that few had had the opportunity to have. He knew her better than almost anybody else, with the possible exception of Sydney and Jarod. And yet, of the three of them, only he gave her no grief. He didn't poke or pry into her deepest emotions or tease or torture her with glimpses of an agonized, twisted past. He was the only one that was just THERE – the only one whose sole purpose in life was to be at her side and give assistance and follow where she might lead him.

And she understood him – knew his background and what had motivated him to seek out the Centre so long ago. She'd forgiven him most of that and then taken him under her wing, trained him in martial arts skills that few outside Japan ever had the chance to learn and then invested her trust in him always being at her back. She'd even fought a few of his battles for him at first – finishing the job of prying him loose from court system and the jails wherein he'd spent most of his youth. Because of her, his record was spotless. Because of her, he was tops in his field.

Hang on, Miss P., he thought out to that nameless mountain slope desperately. I'm coming for you as fast as I can.

oOoOo

"What do you mean, they didn't get off the plane?" Phil was furious. "According to reports from our men in New York, they got ON the plane just fine…"

"We took the descriptions you gave us," the nameless sweeper assigned to the Salt Lake City office complained bitterly. "Two men, both dressed in casual clothing, one balding and the other tall, dark and muscular; one girl with long mousy-blonde hair – travelling together. Right?"

Phil looked down at the report that he had from the sweepers in New York. "That's right."

"Well, nobody matching that description got OFF the plane. There were several bald guys, but all of them were dressed in business suits. As for a girl with long, mousy hair, they didn't see one. There were a couple of teenagers – one wearing a baseball cap – but no girls." The sweeper was very insistent. "I can't help it if the guys on your end missed them getting OFF the plane there in order to throw the Centre off the trail…"

"We're talking about the old Chairman's daughter's personal sweeper and her computer geek here," Phil snapped. "These are men who would be rushing to her side as fast as they could. You can rest assured that they did NOT get off the plane. They probably saw the men in New York and changed their appearance somehow."

"Hey, man, we can't be responsible for that. I mean, you never even bothered to send out pictures of these people!"

"Oh, shut up and let me think!" Phil put his forehead in his hand. Lyle had left him to "handle" things – the very last thing he wanted to do was to botch the whole job. OK – the sweeper and the tech had slipped through the dragnet he'd laid for them. What next, then?

"I want your office to dispatch your best cleaner to the Wasatch National Forest to be a part of the search and rescue effort," Phil directed the man on the other end of the line. "I don't care what kind of whopper you have to tell to make sure that they get on the team, but I want a man involved. When the wreckage is found, I want to be notified immediately – and a team dispatched to make sure that the survivor's list does NOT include Miss Parker and Dr. Sydney Green. Do I make myself clear?"

There was the sound of a throat clearing nervously from the Utah-based sweeper. "As crystal, sir. You're sure you have Mr. Lyle's personal permission to authorize such actions?"

"Do I sound like I'm worried about exceeding my authority?" Phil barked in frustration.

"No, sir…"

"Then get your goddamned asses in gear and GET UP ON THAT MOUNTAIN!" Phil slammed the receiver into the cradle, but the violence did little to satisfy his frustration.

The lastest report on the news was that the aerial search had been called on account of the weather. The longer this took, the more chances for things to go horribly wrong for him. What was more, the longer this took, the more chances HE was taking in Lyle's name. These were chances that he'd sure as hell prefer Lyle took himself.

Where was that bastard anyway?


	7. Unexpected Developments

Chapter Seven – Unexpected Developments

Sydney shuddered and roused as the mischievous wind once more managed to slither down the back of his neck as he leaned against the side of the fuselage, and the involuntary movement roused the woman who was still leaning against him heavily. He did his best to adjust the blankets around them both without exposing his hand or any unnecessary skin of either of them to the elements, but still Miss Parker stirred. "S…s…Sydney?"

"Shhhh…" he shivered at her. "Go back to sleep. It's b…barely light out."

"S…s…o c…cold," she shivered back, ducking her nose beneath the edge of the blanket that covered both of them to the chin.

"I know, P…parker," he told her. "But at least we m…made it through the night." He pressed his cheek against her forehead and found it a little warmer than he'd expected. "It will get a little w…warmer, n…now that it's daylight."

"I'm s…scared, S…Sydney," she admitted. The ache in her shoulder was intense, and there was the beginning of an ache in her belly that she couldn't be sure felt anything like hunger. "And I d…don't feel s…so good," she added, wishing that she didn't have to sound so much like a petulant child.

"You're p…probably j…just hungry," he reassured her to the best of his ability. "We…we all need to eat s…soon."

The mention of the others roused her just a little more. "H…how are they?"

Sydney craned his neck, groaning at the pain such movement caused, and tried to see beyond the row of seats that divided their little section of fuselage wall from that against which the stewardess and the little girl were leaning. "I can't tell from here," he said softly, "and I'm n…not all that anxious to g…get up and ch…check, to b…be honest."

He could feel her right hand, which had been sandwiched between them all night, clutch at his belt as if she could hold him there with her that way. "D…don't l…leave me," she demanded in a frantic tone.

His own arm tightened around her waist. "I'm n…not going anywhere, Parker. It's t…too damned c…cold."

"S…Sydney?" Bennings' call was just as filled with the sound of chattering teeth as his own speech.

"That you, Bennings?" he answered.

"I d…don't know if this g…g…guy is s…still alive." Bennings' voice sounded strained and more than a little frightened.

"Is he b…breathing?" Sydney asked in response.

"I can't t…tell," Bennings answered with the beginnings of panic.

Sydney sighed. If it weren't a question of life and death… "Hang on," he said finally. "I'm c…coming."

"Sydney, n…no…" Miss Parker protested as she felt the blankets over her begin to shift.

"I have to check the m…man with Bennings, Parker," he reminded her apologetically. "I'll be r…right b…back." He left his jacket around her shoulders and took only the one blanket to give him the semblance of protection, then tucked the remaining blankets around her as snuggly as he could. He could see her grey eyes gazing at him pleadingly as he turned and worked his way to his feet, which felt almost numb from having only shoes and stockings to keep them warm.

Slowly and almost painfully he made his way across the aisle to where Bennings was up on one elbow next to his body-warmth partner. Sydney sank to his knees next to the man and reached out a hand to the side of the man's neck. "Is he s…still alive?" Bennings asked after a few moments.

"He's p…probably unconscious," Sydney replied. "His p…pulse is s…slow and a little thready." He lifted the blankets to check the worst of the man's lacerations for new bleeding. "He's not b…bleeding – at least, not wh…where we can s…see."

"What can we d…do for him?" Bennings demanded.

Sydney retracted his hand to behind the blanket and looked into the face of the one of all of them who was virtually uninjured. "We n…need warmth f…first and f…foremost," he replied simply with yet another shudder. "If at all p…possible, we n…need a w…way to make a f…fire in here to keep us a…all from f…freezing to death b…before help comes."

Bennings looked up and around the demolished fuselage. "There's p…plenty of w…wood – all we need is k…kindling and something to s…start a fire…"

"And s…something to p…put the fire IN s…so that it doesn't j…just s…set the cabin in g…general on fire," Sydney warned.

Bennings sighed and sat up straighter, shivered, and then pulled the blankets more securely around the badly injured man. "D…do you want to g…go after w…wood, or look f…for something to use as a h…hearth?"

"I'm n…not sure I sh…should be doing much b…bending and heavy l…lifting," Sydney told him. "I'm s…still seeing d…double m…most of the time, and my neck and sh…shoulders feel like they're ready to f…fall away from my b…body. I was thinking that I would s…see how far I got g…going through any l…luggage that is still intact – if we can g…get ourselves into w…w…warmer clothing…"

"I'm not in m…much b…better shape," Bennings growled. "I ache too. And from wh…where I sit, we n…need to stick t…together and cooperate – g…get the j…jobs done quicker…"

"You b…both need to j…just get b…back into your seats and s…stay fastened," Natalie's voice came through the cabin. "I c…can't take r…responsibility for my p…passengers r…running all over the p…place, t…taking ch…chances…"

"Lady, the only r…reason you s…stayed warm last n…night was b…because I ran all over the place," Bennings snapped at the woman.

"I told you, th…that isn't going to help," Sydney caught at the man's arm. "S…seeing us as s…still in f…flight is the only way sh…she can r…remain even halfway f…functional – and we n…need her help in t…taking care of the little one."

"If she c…can't see the f…fix we're in, she's a m…m…menace to us and to h…herself," Bennings shook his head. "We have enough to w…worry about that we d…don't need s…someone living in a fantasy world."

"Sh…short of knocking her out, I d…don't see how you're g…going to do very m…much to change things," Sydney sighed. "You n…need to curb your im…impatience…"

"You n…need to just s…stick to fixing psyche's and s…splinting broken b…bones, Sydney," Bennings retorted. "The only w…way through this s…situation is for one p…person to take a leadership role and o…organize those who are c…capable."

"And y…you think y…you're the one most qualified for that r…role, I take it." Sydney allowed sarcasm to season his tone.

"That's right," Bennings nodded confidently. "I h…head a large philanthropic f…foundation with h…hundreds of employees – I'm f…familiar with the j…job of delegating authority…"

"And I am th…the one familiar with the physical c…capabilities of our g…group," Sydney retorted. "I know the emotional s…stability of the p…people you're talking about ordering around – and wh…whether or not they would even understand wh…what you ask of them."

"W…will you two j…just sit down, f…fasten your belts and sh…shut up?" Natalie snapped, dumping the little girl on the ground and rising in anger. "I'm the employee of the airline p…present here, and I sh…should have the r…responsibility…"

"Can it, Lady," Bennings snarled. "You can't even tell that we're not in the air, f…flying on peacefully to our destination. Your b…bubbles have been knocked so far off plumb…"

"All of you, sh…shut up!" Miss Parker had found her way to her feet and stumbled over to join them – and Sydney reached for her and had her supported with a hand at her back before she could wilt.

"Parker…" he began, only to have her push against him to stand on her own again.

"This bickering is meaningless and could get us all killed. Bennings, you're the most physically capable – that makes you the most likely p…person to ask to do physically challenging tasks, like gathering wood and maybe f…figuring out how to block off the wind from whistling through here all the time. Sydney, you're the s…second most physically capable here – and the one with the most training in p…planning and strategy. Figure out what we can use to build a fire in here without b…burning our shelter to a crisp and then see what you can find as far as luggage and extra clothing. Natalie, you help S…sydney and keep an eye on that kid. We don't need her w…wandering around and getting lost, and we don't need you doing it either."

Bennings found himself under the glare of storm-grey eyes and a determined expression. "And just who the hell d…do you think YOU are?"

Miss Parker did her best to pull herself to her full height. "My name is MISS Parker, and I am the head of Surveillance and Internal Security for one of the biggest R&D think tanks in the US. I trained the people who train our bodyguards in the martial arts, and I am responsible for the design and maintenance of security systems used by corporations and governments world-wide. I am no paper-pusher sitting at a fancy desk."

Bennings bristled in the half-light of dawn through snow-obscured portholes and cast his gaze at the others. "I'll be d…damned if I let some dame…"

"Miss Parker is right," Sydney nodded. "There are enough j…jobs that we can't afford to argue like this. Her suggestions are good ones – I move we do as she asks."

Bennings turned angry emerald eyes on her. "And just what the hell do you suggest that YOU do in the interim, Y…your Majesty?"

Miss Parker turned and pointed. "There's a man over there who is barely alive – who's lost even m…m…more blood than I h…have - and he needs to be kept warm. I can also help with the kid for a while…" Sydney could hear how much of a concession that was. "…so that N…natalie can help with the luggage and finding warmer clothing for us to w…wear."

Bennings was finally calming down enough to hear the reason in Miss Parker's words. "All right," he conceded somewhat less than gracefully. "I can accept that."

"Good." Miss Parker positioned herself so she could sag against a seat back without being too apparent about it. "Bennings, once you f…figure out how to b…block the wind, everybody who can move and do even a little lifting will h…help. Are we all agreed?"

"I don't think…" Natalie began, but her complaint died as Miss Parker put herself in the woman's face.

"You have one b…broken arm. I can give you a m…matched set, if you don't cooperate." Miss Parker hissed at her.

Bennings leaned toward Sydney with raised brows. "Your daughter has quite a way about her, doc."

"She wasn't known as the 'Ice Queen' for n…nothing," the Belgian responded with a look of pride in his eye. "She's the b…best at what she does – and she doesn't accept anything l…less from others."

"C'mon, people, let's move," Miss Parker gestured with her good hand. "Syd, tuck me down with our injured friend here – and then tuck the girl in with us – before you start seeing what we can do about getting a fire going. Natalie, you stick close to Bennings until S…Sydney comes out, understand?"

oOoOo

"Hi. This is the Broots residence. Neither Lazlo nor Debbie can come to the phone right now; but if you leave your name and number…" Jarod growled as he hit the disconnect button on his phone against Debbie's chipper voice. They were gone – he'd expected that – but had forgotten that the only contact number he had for Broots was his home land line.

There would be no news coming about the crash or Miss Parker from that corner. He was on his own in that respect – and would have to depend upon the media and his own contacts within the NTSA and National Guard.

Frustrated, he shoved his cell phone into the pocket of his sports jacket and reached for his overcoat. The weather had turned chilly in Philadelphia, and his weekly breakfast with his sister meant that he'd have to brave some of that weather.

Emily had been the only one to remain behind in Philly when Charles, Margaret and the rest had relocated to Virginia – she had a high-profile job at the newspaper she didn't want to lose, not to mention a stubborn brother newly hired at the Bennings Foundation to keep her company. They had instituted a routine of having breakfast together once a week – to compare notes, exchange news from Virginia, to take advantage of the other's areas of expertise – and it was her turn to host him at her home in the suburbs.

The information he'd received the night before on the alleged assassin was now safely stowed in his briefcase, which he grabbed up at the last moment before heading out of the front door to his apartment. The limousine would be at his apartment house door in less than five minutes, and elevator in this older, more gracious apartment building ran on the slow side on better days.

A few moments later, standing in the brisk late-Fall wind on the sidewalk in front of his building waiting for his ride, he hauled his cell phone out of his pocket and pressed a single key to dial.

"Yeah?" was the answer when the line was picked up.

"It's me," Jarod spoke brusquely and quickly. "Take this down: the guy's name is Stoller, he lives at 1836 West Cherry, Apartment 204. Check it out – and find out when he was last seen in the area."

"A lead?" the man asked, obviously still in the process of noting down the information.

"A potential problem," Jarod replied darkly. "Get back to me as soon as you know something."

"Gotcha, boss. Anything else?"

The cream-colored limo swerved out of traffic and pulled up to the curb smoothly. "No, that's it. Call me," Jarod directed, then shoved the phone back into his pocket so he had a free hand with which to negotiate climbing into the back of the vehicle.

"Where we going, Mr. Green?" the driver asked solicitously through the sliding glass window that separated the front from the more comfortable passenger compartment.

"My sister's, Evan," Jarod answered absently as he pulled his briefcase onto his lap and opened it to pull out the photo of the man he was seeking. "And then to the office after."

"Yes, sir," the chauffer replied and moved the big car skillfully back into the flow of traffic and around a corner heading for the wide highway that connected downtown Philadelphia with many of its suburbs. He knew the route well, but was concerned at the silence from the back. Jarod was normally a much more congenial and conversant passenger – something must be seriously amiss to have silenced a committed jokester.

He wondered if it had anything to do with the Big Boss being in that airline crash – and then shook his head. _Your job is to drive Mr. Green wherever he wants to go, Evan,_ he chided himself. _Worry about getting there in one piece – leave the rest of it for Mr. Jarod to worry about._ He took his hand off the wheel just long enough to give a sharp jerk to he brim of his black cap and then focused on the traffic.

oOoOo

Erin sucked hard on the straw of her diet cola and cast her gaze about the Student Union continually. If she weren't so angry, she would have been concerned.

Cherry had never called – and now her research partner had stood her up for their meeting to get the paper outlined and decide who was going to do what as far as creating the final copy. How in the hell did they expect to get that research paper written if half of them was no longer doing the assigned work? Erin sighed – she had gathered enough information on her own to do a very minimal paper. It wouldn't earn her as good a grade as if she'd been able to work with Cherry – who had a reputation for putting pizzazz into a paper and garnering the better grades – but it would keep her qualifying for her scholarship at the end of the term.

"Hi, Erin," a young man's voice sounded practically in her ear, causing Erin to jump.

"Oh. Hi, Frank," she greeted her classmate, who grinned foolishly at having startled her. "Say, have you seen Cherry today?"

Frank shook his shaggy head. "Nope. She didn't turn up for Psych class this morning. Aren't you two working together for Dr. Alfonse?"

"Yeah," Erin scowled. "She was SUPPOSED to call me last night and then bring all her notes here – NOW. Any idea where she's gotten to?"

Frank's face, with its seemingly random allotment of beard growth, went blank for a moment before shaking. "Oh, wait a minute," he said, brightening. "She told Greg – you know, her neighbor across the hall at her dorm, that she had a date last night."

Erin blinked. "A date? I thought she was still all broken up over Jess…"

"He told me she said she'd just met this really neat guy, and she was ready to have a good time for a change." Frank stared at her for a moment. "Have you tried calling her apartment?"

"Several times – all I ever get is the answering machine."

The young man finally shrugged. "She HAS been known to flake out on study partners before, Erin."

"I know," Erin admitted. "But we've been friends ever since we both got here. I don't think she'd just blow me off."

"Whatcha gonna do?"

She sighed deeply. "No choice, man - head to the library. I gotta get a start on the paper, if Cherry isn't going to help. To hell with Brody's class – tell him I'm not feeling well, OK? And take good notes for me."

"Will do. Meet you later?" Frank smiled at the blonde hopefully, and Erin stifled a chuckle. He was so transparent – and so NOT what she was looking for in a guy.

"I have plans for this afternoon and evening," she told him. "But I'll meet you here tomorrow after Lit, if you want…"

The look of absolute joy came across his face. "It's a date. See you…"

Erin waved at him as he resettled his heavy-looking backpack on his shoulder and walked off in the direction of the Liberal Arts building. Then, with another deep sigh, she turned and tossed her empty soda cup into the nearest trash container and headed off for the tall and quiet Library. She glanced at her wristwatch. She had three hours before Lyle was supposed to be in front of the Student Union – hopefully she could at least get the research paper outlined…

oOoOo

"Have you seen this?" Broots pulled the drapes on the window overlooking the parking lot and displayed the dusting of snow that had already settled on the hunched vehicles and the light flurry of flakes being pushed around by the wind in their slow descent.

Sam stared out the window and then at Broots in consternation. If it was starting to snow in Salt Lake City, what was it doing in the Wasatch National Forest? "I'll turn on the news," he said in clipped tones, already on the move. "We need some local weather…"

The newscaster's voice came on loudly and clearly the moment the ON button was pushed. "…has reported that aerial search efforts to locate United Flight 1598 that crashed into the Wasatch National Forest have been grounded until the weather clears. A representative of the National Guard reports that all search efforts in the area will be suspended until a positive sighting of the wreckage has been confirmed, in order to prevent any further loss of life. The National Weather Service predicts that the storm that moved into the area will last through today and into tomorrow, dumping six inches of snow in Cedar City and Salt Lake City – and an expected twenty-four inches at higher elevations. KSLC reporter Jim Carney spoke with a representative of the National Transportation and Safety Administration yesterday evening, and was told this…"

The picture changed quickly, focusing on a clean-shaven young man with a microphone in his face. His expression was grave, and his eyes bespoke how uncomfortable he was to be speaking on-camera. "Analysts with our Agency have expressed serious doubts about the possibility of survivors, considering the elevation of the probable crash site and the inclement weather at higher elevations. With that in mind, our liaison with the sheriff's Search and Rescue teams in the area have determined that rescue efforts will be suspended indefinitely, pending the resumption of aerial search teams making a confirmed sighting of the wreckage."

The newscaster's face blinked back into view. "United Flight 1598 was bound for San Francisco from New York City, and was carrying one hundred twenty eight passengers and crew. The names of the crash victims are behind withheld pending notification of next of kin and confirmation from rescuers arriving on the scene. And now, in other news…"

Sam hit the button and turned the TV off again, not really wanting to look over at Broots. "We should still head for Ogden," he said doggedly, pulling his polo shirt over the top of his tee shirt and tucking it into the waistband of his pants. "I want to be as close to the action as I can get the moment the airplanes go back up."

"Sam…" Broots began, his heart in his shoes at the thought of Sydney and Miss Parker dead up on that mountain, without even anybody out looking for them at the moment.

"No!" Sam shook his head vehemently. "I won't believe that they're dead until I see it for myself – and until that moment, I'm going to behave as if Miss Parker and Sydney are up there, waiting for us to get off our asses and help them out. If they're alive, they need people down here believing that they are." He turned a ferocious blue glare on Broots. "I don't want to hear anything different – and neither do you."

Broots nodded slowly and then turned warning eyes to his daughter, cautioning her wordlessly to agree as well. This was a side of his sweeper friend that he'd never encountered before – he'd never expected that much vehemence from a sweeper in the first place, much less from Sam. Sam had always been a calm, cool and very capable operative – whether it be in watching Miss Parker's back or in the hunt for Jarod proper – to see him half unglued was unsettling, to say the least.

It was just as well that Broots had surrendered the job of driving to Sam already – the task of keeping the little car they'd rented on slippery and possibly icy roads would hopefully keep Sam's mind from entertaining less pleasant thoughts. Debbie looked as if she hadn't slept well the night before – she'd probably sack out in the back seat and not be much company.

It was going to be a long and tense day.

oOoOo

"Yeah. What did you find out?" Jarod demanded into the cell phone.

"Stoller commented to his landlady a couple of days ago that he'd be out of town for about a week on a job," the man on the other end reported. "A Yellow Cab came and picked him up and took him to La Guardia at about ten yesterday morning. I called the Yellow Cab dispatch and got a hold of the driver who took him to the airport. He said that he had to make the flight to San Francisco."

"MAKE the flight?" Jarod sat up straighter at his sister's kitchen table and tried to avoid looking at Emily, who had turned around at the strident tone in her brother's voice from having finished feeding all of their breakfast dishes except the coffee mugs into the dishwasher. "You mean, he was ON the plane with Carl when it went down?"

"Looks like it, boss. I also called in a favor and got the name and number of a known associate of Stoller – and I talked to him too. Looks like Stoller likes to get in nice and close to do his hits – and that he's VERY good at what he does."

"Damn." Jarod wiped his mouth with his free hand nervously. "Have you seen any news lately? What's the news from Utah?"

"Last I heard, all the searches have been called off on account of a storm," his assistant stated with a shrug obvious in his tone. "Anything else you want me to do, Boss?"

"No," Jarod sighed in frustration. "Head on back to the office – I'll meet you there at eleven." He punched the disconnect button with more force than necessary and stuffed the device into his shirt breast pocket.

"Jarod…" Emily sat down just around the corner of the table from her big brother and put a gentle hand on his forearm. "What's going on here?"

Eyes that were as dark as her own came up to meet her gaze with a guilty expression in their depths, and then dropped away. "Carl Bennings was on that United flight that crashed into the mountains in Utah yesterday," he told her slowly, "and now I find out that an assassin that had accepted the Blair contract was on the flight with him."

A second hand landed on the forearm to join the first. "I'm so sorry," Emily said softly. She knew how Jarod felt about his boss and best friend – and had a pretty good idea of how hard it was for him to have to sit here over half a continent away and wait for others to dig up the body. "So the crash wasn't sabotage?"

He shook his head and reached for his coffee with his unencumbered hand. "No… I seriously doubt a self-respecting assassin would commit suicide like that – BEFORE getting paid for the job well-done," he replied caustically, then backed down. "I'm sorry, Sis. It's just…" No. He couldn't tell her about the rest of his worries – she wouldn't understand. She'd only barely forgiven him for not asking Zoe to marry him.

"I know," she sympathized with him. "Is there anything I can do?"

He looked up into her face with an agonized expression on his face. "Keep your ear to the newswires for me while you're at work today?" he asked softly. "It's… it's important to me."

Emily tipped her head in an expression that Jarod had become very fond of – and which could irritate him quicker than few others. "There's something you're not telling me, isn't there?" she asked astutely. She studied his face closely. "You didn't get much sleep last night, did you?"

"Em…" he complained.

"What is it? Is it Them again?" she asked bitterly. "Have they found you again? Are you going to have to run again, after all this time…"

"No, no, nothing like that," he reassured her and took one of her hands from his forearm with his other hand and squeezed it. "It has nothing to do with them." _Liar!_ he berated himself. _You know damned well it has everything to do with them_.

"Just making sure," Emily told him firmly, rising and picking up both of the coffee cups from the table. "And now, we both need to get our rears in gear or we're both going to be late for work."

Jarod rose too, and took his sister into a gentle embrace. "Thanks for the eats, Sis – and I'm sorry I wasn't such good company today."

"Don't worry about it," Emily replied, closing her eyes and hugging her brother tightly. "Oh, and I was supposed to tell you that Ethan is going to be in town this evening. You wanna get together for dinner after I pick him up at the airport?"

"What's Little Brother coming to the Big City for?" Jarod asked as he let her go, genuinely curious. "He doesn't like Big Cities, if memory serves."

"He didn't say," Emily told him, shrugging. "He just said that he had to talk to you – so I suppose you'll find out sometime at dinner." She bent and then handed him his briefcase, which he'd left next to hers near the front door. "I'll call you when I have the plans made."

"Be good," he kissed his sister on the cheek fondly, "and say Hi to Little Brother for me when you see him." He waved at her once more from halfway down the sidewalk to where Evan was waiting for him in the limo. He climbed into the passenger compartment with a serious look falling over his face.

What on earth would Ethan want with him? And why now?

oOoOo

Clarence Evans scratched his head as he shuffled over to the window facing out into the parking lot and pulled the drapes. It was late – after noon already, if the angle of the sunlight was any indication – and he still felt as if he'd been dragged through a knothole. His next-door neighbors had continued their…ahem…activities until nearly dawn, and he'd finally dug out that last bottle of scotch from the bottom of his samples case and reinforced his drunk so he could pass out so that the noise wouldn't bother him. And now his mouth tasted like an outhouse smelled, his head felt as if it were ready to just roll off of his shoulders and into the toilet, and his stomach was telling him in no uncertain terms that food would be an unwelcome intruder for the time being.

He snorted as he saw a man emerge from the room next door with an overnight bag and a huge and heavy-looking suitcase in hand and head to the black sedan that was parked at the very end of the parking lot. "Finally had enough, did you, you jerk?" he growled, but not loudly enough to carry through thin walls and plate glass. "I wonder if your bosses know what you do on your off hours," he commented, noting the fresh, almost new appearance to the man's sweat suit and sneakers. "Was she your wife – or did you hire her by the hour?"

Feeling like a voyeur – and finding it a satisfying payback for the embarrassment and frustration of the night before – he laughed when the overnight bag slipped from the man's left hand. It seemed that the man had no thumb on that hand – and it made handling that extra piece of luggage difficult. "You deserve that, you prick!" Clarence chortled at the second time the bag hit the ground.

Finally, however, the man had his luggage loaded into the back of the car and was climbing behind the steering wheel. Clarence had one chance to get a good look at the reason he'd not gotten any sleep that night before his stomach finally rebelled entirely, and he had to run to the bathroom to lose what little remained of his liquid dinner.

God, but he felt shitty!

oOoOo

Erin sat on top of the brick wall that bordered the flowerbed to the north of the main entrance to the Student Union, positively fuming. 'What was it with people lately?' she growled to herself silently. 'First Cherry, now Lyle… Is it my deodorant, or was it something I said…'

For the tenth time she tipped her wrist and looked at her watch. Two-fifteen, and not a sign of her date yet. She sighed and decided in a fit of pique that if he wasn't here in the next five minutes, she was taking off – she'd go find Frank and take him out to a pizza parlor and get them both snockered on beer and peanuts. And if she couldn't find Frank… She narrowed her eyes and looked around again. She'd think of SOMETHING interesting to do, by God.

So intense was she in her staring down the sidewalk to the Union that she didn't notice Lyle come out of the Student Union behind her. "Hi," he said softly, hoping not to startle her too much. "Sorry I'm late – had a meeting that ran late…"

Erin's face relaxed from the expression of belligerence and frustration that it had worn for the better part of the last three hours, and she threw her arms around Lyle's neck. "I was starting to think you weren't coming – and after the day I've had, it would have been one disappointment too many," she purred, laying her head on his shoulder and enjoying the feel of his arms surrounding her and holding her close.

"I'm sorry your day has been bad," Lyle smoothed back her hair from her face fondly. "What's gone wrong? Tell me about it – and maybe you'll feel better."

"Oh," she sighed and stared at his ear, "my best friend didn't show up to help on a research paper we're writing together – and she didn't call last night either. I've just spent the last three hours in the library, trying to cobble a coherent research paper out of my half of the information we were going to use together."

"That's too bad," Lyle murmured comfortingly into her ear. "I'll have to have a talk with this friend of yours one of these days."

"I'm just glad you finally showed up," Erin continued happily. She was about to lift her head from his shoulders when she saw the small droplet of something dark on the side of his neck. "You must have cut yourself shaving," she stated, licking her finger and wiping at it gently, "you have blood on your neck."

Lyle stood very still beneath her ministrations. "Did you get it," he asked finally, once he felt her no longer working on a spot on his neck below his ear.

"Got it," she announced and pushed herself out of his arms a little. "So… Where are you going to take a woman who's had a really awful day?"

"How about we just get in my car and start driving – you can tell me if you see something you want me to stop for?" Lyle suggested, slipping his arm about her waist. Why had he always avoided contact with the young and innocent before? How wonderful it was to break out the old persona that he'd lived with until Lyle Bowman had beaten it out of him. Who knows, maybe it would have been his real self, if the latter part of his life had never happened…

"That sounds wonderful – just what I need," Erin bubbled happily, slipping her arm around his waist in return. "Where's your car?" She took a good look at the informal garb he was in. "I thought you said you were in a meeting…"

"Some of the members wanted to adjourn it for the sauna at the local gym," he explained glibly without hesitation. "I don't know about you, but the last thing I want to wear after sweating like a pig in a sauna is a business suit…"

Erin just leaned into him as he slipped the key into the front passenger door lock. "I just mean it's nice to see that you can wear something besides monkey suits."

Lyle merely grinned at her and gave her a glancing kiss to the cheek as she climbed into the car. This was going to be the perfect end to the perfect day – with the final celebration to come tomorrow at noon, when he cooked up that delightful cut of thigh that sat in the battery-powered cooler in the suitcase in the trunk of the car.

Life couldn't get much better than this!

oOoOo

Miss Parker withheld the sigh of exasperation when the little girl once more shifted against her, trying to find a comfortable spot in the small space that existed between the bodies of the adults lying beside her. The child had been quiet – and Miss Parker suspected at one point, she'd been crying. And now, with the morning wearing on, she was starting to get fidgety.

Surprisingly, the man next to her gave a low moan, and Miss Parker hushed at the child as she propped herself up on her left elbow to get a good look at him. The incredibly pale face winced several times, and then the eyelids fluttered. "Take it easy," she cautioned him. "We have most of your injuries bandaged, but don't try to move…"

The dark brown eyes opened slowly and then took in the situation around them just as slowly. "Where are we?"

Miss Parker let herself slide back into a prone position, with the child nestled between herself and the man next to her, and straightened the numerous blankets over them so that they gave maximum protection from what was still a very cruel chill. "You're up on a mountainside," she explained gently. "We crashed."

The man shifted – or tried to – and then let loose an agonized groan of pain. "I can't move my legs…"

"They're both broken," Miss Parker told him sadly. "You also have some pretty nasty cuts – a deep gash on your torso that we frankly thought would do you in if we didn't get it bandaged in time…"

The dark eyes slowly focused on her again. "Who's this 'we' you speak of?"

"Six of us are left," she stated with a flat voice. "We're all that's left."

The dark gaze lifted and looked around, seeing little other than the bottoms of seats. "What is this place?"

"What's left of first class," she announced with brittle humor. "The best shelter around right now." The little girl shifted and tapped Miss Parker on the right shoulder. Miss Parker drew her breath in a pained hiss, but restrained her urge to snarl. "What is it, sweetie?"

"Where's Mommy?"

Miss Parker closed her eyes and swallowed hard. Why couldn't the kid's questions have come when Sydney was around? "She's gone, sweetie," she explained with as gentle a tone as she could manage. "She's gone to Heaven."

"She wouldn't wake up." The child's voice was confused.

"I know, baby," Miss Parker soothed. "What's your name?"

Dark eyes found her face – eyes that had very little emotion in them. "Emily," the child replied softly.

Miss Parker looked over at the man. "What about you? What's your name?"

He shifted again, groaned and then sighed. "George. You?"

"Parker," she replied, closing her eyes and wrapping her left arm about Emily's slight shoulders. The poke in her right shoulder had set the thing to aching badly. "You can call me Parker."

"What's wrong with you?" George asked in a breathy voice, his words leaving a small cloud of steam over his face.

"Bolt of wood through the shoulder," she answered, "broken collarbone."

"We're in great shape, aren't we?" George's voice was bitter.

"Shit happens," slipped from her lips before she had a chance to remember that there were young children present.

"Parker?" Sydney's voice called to her from the back of the cabin. "Parker? Are you awake?"

"Sydney," she called back and was finally grateful to see the familiar face peering down at her from between the rows of seats. "What did you find?"

"Bennings is hauling it in," he stated, slipping to a sitting position next to her. "I'm not sure what it is, but it's round and bowled in a bit – and big enough to hold a decent-sized fire."

"Sydney!" came the winded voice of Bennings from the back of the cabin. "I could use a hand…"

Sydney groaned and got back to his feet with some difficulty.

"You still seeing double, Syd?" Miss Parker asked quickly.

"I'm managing," was all he would tell her before he was shuffling carefully back to lend his meager effort to the process of dragging the heavy piece of metal into the cabin. In the end, the only place it could actually fit was in the forward part of the cabin, where the seats had been torn from their place by the force of the breaking branches through the side of the fuselage. Both men sagged back against seats, breathing hard and eyeing the makeshift hearth. First Sydney and then Bennings finally cast their eyes to where the corpses of the young couple still lay on the destroyed seat.

"We need to get them out of here – and get rid of that row of seats too," Bennings said finally, voicing what they both knew.

Sydney nodded slowly and then turned to where Miss Parker lay. "Parker, cover the girl's face – she doesn't need to see this."

"C'mon, sweetie," Miss Parker purred at the girl. "Tuck your face in here and get nice and warm."

Emily didn't protest or rebel, but merely snuggled down into the space she'd occupied for hours already, with her face pressed hard into Miss Parker's side.

"Do it, Syd," Miss Parker called back. "All clear."

Bennings brought out a single blanket and carefully helped Sydney move the stiffened bodies onto it so that they could be dragged out the back after being lifted over the hearth. Miss Parker deliberately kept her face down with Emily's, soothing and softly singing to the child to keep her from getting curious about the noises going on around her that got louder when it came to dragging the demolished seats out the back. Finally, however, the men returned and once more sagged against the remains of the seats at the more open forward end of the cabin.

"All done," Sydney called.

Miss Parker put her lips to Emily's ear. "You stay here and help George stay warm – I'll be right back."

"'Kay," the girl replied without emotion, turning and snuggling now against the man's side just as she had been against Miss Parker.

George lifted his arm with a groan and put it around the child's shoulders. "Stick with me, kiddo – and we'll both be warm."

Miss Parker walked slowly and painfully through the cabin from front to back, carrying every broken piece of wood she could find forward until the hearth was piled with fuel. "We need something to start a fire," she announced then, giving each adult she didn't know an intense look. "Anybody smoke?"

"I do," came George's tortured voice. "In my pants pocket.

Bennings walked over and bent over the man while Sydney cleared most of the larger piece of wood to the side. "We need to be frugal," he explained to Miss Parker's questioning gaze. "And we need kindling."

Miss Parker reached up and pulled down one of the pillows from the overhead compartments and tore open the zippered plastic cover. "Hold this," she instructed him and handed him the opened pillow so that she could reach in and tear out small pieces of the foam within and stuff it under and around the few branches Sydney had left. Finally she took the pillow away from him and tossed it into a corner. "Bennings, see if that will light."

As the foam flared and the smaller branches caught fire, the warmth began to spread – and six survivors looked at each other in surprised satisfaction. Fire meant survival.

Now all they needed was rescue.

oOoOo

Inez Campos slowly trundled her cart down the walk toward the last room on her shift. The drunk in the room next door had his "Do Not Disturb" sign prominently posted, so she moved smoothly past that door and then stopped to slip her master key into the door of the last room. Not that she expected it – the patrons of the Evening Star Motel weren't exactly the best caliber people – but she hoped that at least the last person in here would have left her a tip.

Grasping the bar on the end of her cleaning cart, she backed into the room and turned around to survey just how much of a mess had been left for her to clean up.

Her screams carried for more than two city blocks.


	8. Out Of The Blue

Chapter Eight – Out of the Blue

Sydney looked around the wan circle of faces as they sat or lay close to the metal hearth that had a sizeable chunk of broken pine tree burning with a hot flame. The storm had not ceased blowing all day – although for a brief while early on, it seemed that the temperature had risen enough that the snowflakes turned to freezing rain – and beyond the makeshift shelter that was what was left of the first class cabin, the snow was beginning to pile up again. The hoped-for raise in temperatures with the coming of the morning sun had never happened to any great extent – and already the decision had been made to take shifts keeping an eye on the fire and keeping that necessary survival tool lit and fed through the night. The morning would see all of them gathering more wood, if at all possible.

Those who were in any way ambulatory and capable were bone-tired. Moving about in the chill of the storm had helped keep them warm, but had taxed what little energy resources they'd had. All but George had eventually participated in the luggage gathering process – and the success of that effort was visible in the motley array of mismatched colors and poorly-fitting sizes of the coats, jackets, pants, shirts, vests, and socks that had been applied in addition to the clothing they'd been wearing originally. Now, hungry and still somewhat cold, they were huddled around their precious fire – and Sydney could tell that there was a faint hint of desperation in everybody's eye as their second night approached.

Bennings' face was as tired as Sydney imagined his own was – and with good reason. The two of them had been the major contributors to the effort to haul two fairly heavy scraps of metal from other parts of the fuselage over next to their shelter, only calling upon the others to help them stand those metal sheets up and lean them against the most open end of their makeshift shelter. The result had been to shut off a greater share of the chilled wind that had whistled through the hollow cylinder with more and more vehemence as the day had passed. With a blanket thrown over his shoulders, and his sandy hair still looking plastered to his head after being out in the freezing rain collecting luggage to rifle through for the better part of the day, he was huddled as close to the flames as he could get.

Natalie once more had taken charge of little Emily and had her firmly tucked under her good arm and against her side beneath a blanket. The stewardess had donned a whole man's suit over the top of her thin, polyester uniform, and then helped Emily fold back sleeves and roll up pants legs after helping the girl into a similar set of clothing. Sydney could tell that, about mid-morning, Natalie's ability to maintain her fantasy about being in the air en route to their destination had begun to wane – and the woman had slowly become less and less communicative as the day had passed. Now her eyes stared into the dancing flame without really seeing it.

Emily's little face peered out from the blanket that surrounded the two of them and also seemed to be looking at little or nothing. How Miss Parker had managed to get the child to speak at all was beyond him – but whatever she'd done, it had been of temporary benefit. The child had fallen silent again, and nothing anybody said to her was eliciting any response at all. She would do as she was told, and had proven an obedient worker in piling salvaged luggage up so as to block as much of the wind as would try to whistle in through the forward opening. But that was all.

George was in a great deal of pain, in bad shape overall and completely unable to do much as far as taking care of his own needs. Bennings had found a shirt and a warm vest and helped the invalid into them – and then tucked a warm overcoat around him before covering him again with a blanket. Bennings had also taken the matter into hand when George's bladder threatened to burst – finding a coffee pot from somewhere out in the debris field and giving it to him to use as a bedpan. As all had finally collected around the metal hearth, the last ounce of energy Sydney and Bennings had was spent dragging the most injured of them closer to the warmth as well.

Miss Parker… Sydney eyed her shrewdly and saw the signs of the ravages of blood loss in her extreme pallor. She too had bundled up into a man's suit to the best of her ability, although the right sleeves of the shirt and the jacket hung limp and empty. He'd seen her take off her expensive stilettos and smash the thin heels repeatedly against the foot of a seat to break them off – but even that hadn't helped her stay any more steady on her feet when her dizziness came from within. She'd found some thick, hand-knit woolen socks and taken her shoes off entirely to enjoy the warmth they offered. She shifted in her seat next to him and leaned her head on his arm a little – and he lifted his blanket in an open invitation for her to snuggle with him as she had before. It was the best he could do for her now – the only thing he could do for her.

He already knew that he was in poorer shape than he'd want to admit. His double vision had never resolved itself, and the lump on his forehead had kept a mammoth-sized headache throbbing all day long. His neck and shoulders were stiff and getting stiffer – and every movement he made now came at the cost of extreme pain. He too had taken another suit and put it on, stuffing some of the empty spaces between garments with more garments, like the others had, so that there was padding helping him keep warm as much as possible. But he'd done just about all that he could as far as physical labor – other than toss in a piece of wood every now and then, he didn't have the energy to move anymore.

"At least we're warmer than we were last night," Miss Parker said to him, her voice low and intended not to travel very far as she felt him pull the blanket about both their shoulders, and she pillowed her head gratefully on his chest.

Sydney grunted wordlessly and held her close, carefully avoiding her right shoulder and arm as he tucked the blanket into his other hand and then wrapped his arm about her waist. It was a good thing that they were settling down for the evening already – he could hope that a slightly warmer rest that evening, combined with a chance to just keep his eyes closed and not have to make sense of conflicting visual messages would mean that his headache would abate some. If what he suspected was the case, however, the relief he was hoping for wouldn't happen.

"You OK?" Miss Parker asked, concerned at her old friend's lack of response.

"I'll manage," he murmured back finally.

"Still seeing double?"

"Mmm-hmmm."

"What else?"

"It doesn't matter," he sighed. "There's nothing either of us can do about it."

She lifted her head from his chest and looked up into his face. "Sydney… Talk to me."

The chestnut eyes glanced down into hers and then blinked gently in acknowledgement of her concern. "I said I'll manage, Parker. I'm just tired. Don't worry about me – you need keep yourself warm…"

"Don't you give me that 'I'm indestructible' male attitude, Sydney Green – it doesn't play with me and never has. Now, where do you hurt?" Her brows had folded together stubbornly.

"It doesn't matter," he reiterated and closed his eyes in an attempt to put the discussion to bed.

"It does to me!" She suddenly realized that her voice was getting louder, and she lowered her voice while adding a note of pleading. "Sydney, please…" Her eyes searched his face and caught at his gaze, which had returned to her. "Is it your head?"

"Very well, if you must know…" he sighed in defeat, "I have the mother of all headaches, and have had all day – just to make the double vision bearable, I'm sure…" He closed his eyes again, wishing he dared leave them closed. Closed felt better – and she didn't need to know about the neck and shoulders. She couldn't do anything about them anyway, so the less she had to worry about, the better.

"Is that all of it?"

He opened his eyes and looked down at her again. "Isn't that enough?"

"That's not answering my question."

"Parker, between all the bending and lifting I did today, and the talking now, my headache is getting worse. Can we just drop it for a while?" Please, his expression pleaded with her now.

The two of them kept their gazes locked in a well-meaning battle of wills, until Miss Parker finally looked away. "All right, I'll let it go for the time being – but I want to know if you start to really hurt somewhere, Freud." She laid her head back down on his chest and snuggled again. "I want my chance to start over – and I want us both to make it in one piece so I get that chance."

"I told you, cheri, we'll make it," Sydney soothed, letting his eyes fall closed once more and then letting his cheek rest against the top of her head. "And as far as I'm concerned, we've already started over. Considering everything, I don't think waiting for rescue is all that prudent in that regard."

Miss Parker swallowed hard and thought for a long time before voicing what she was thinking: "Do you think they're going to find us in time?"

"I don't know, Parker," he answered in a rare fit of honesty. "I don't know."

oOoOo

"Mr. Carew, you must realize what this situation suggests to us?"

Phil frowned and nodded at the same time. Oh yes, he knew EXACTLY what these FBI fellows were thinking – and he was utterly unable to give them any alternatives until Mr. Lyle finally came out of hiding. "I understand your concerns, Agent Stein, but I'm hoping you'll appreciate the situation that I'm in. My boss is out of town and incommunicado for at least another twelve hours – and no amount of harassment or threats can make me produce him any faster." He threw out his hands. "Believe me, I would just as soon Mr. Lyle spoke to you himself – I'm no happier about our current situation than you are."

"And when do you expect him to be back in contact with you?" Agent Gerald Stein was getting tired of the run-around this Centre lackey was giving him. They already had plenty of evidence that the car bomb that had killed William Raines had been the work of a well-known assassin-for-hire by the name of Colin Arnham. Preliminary investigation had Arnham meeting with Mr. Lyle a week before the bombing – and there was great interest to know exactly what the nature of that meeting had been.

Phil looked at the FBI agent over the massive Chairman's desk with narrowed eyes. "I don't know how many different ways I can tell you this, but Mr. Lyle told me that he'd be out of touch for between thirty-six to forty-eight hours. He's been gone just a little over twenty-four hours." In a sudden spate of pique, he shrugged. "You do the math this time."

"Where did you say Mr. Lyle went again?" Stein could hope he'd catch the Centre middleman in a lie…

"I didn't." Phil almost laughed at the expression of disappointment that flitted across the agent's face. "Mr. Lyle didn't tell anyone where he was going – only how long he could be expected to be gone."

"I want to be notified the minute Mr. Lyle gets back, is that understood?" Stein rose, knowing now there was nothing else to be gained by pressing Phil Carew. Either the man was stubborn and loyal to a fault, or he genuinely didn't know where his boss was and couldn't reach him. "If another twenty-four hours goes by without my hearing from you, I'm afraid I may have to arrest you for obstruction of justice."

"I'll consider myself warned," Phil rose as well, but didn't extend his hand as he had before. "Good day, Agent Stein."

He remained standing while the FBI agent stalked from the office, and then sat back down in the comfortable leather chair that by rights was Lyle's heavily. Not a minute went by before the glass doors opened again, and Vinny – tall, dark-haired, muscular to the extreme – came walking quietly in. Phil shot Vinny a withering glance and then spun in the chair to look out the window. "Any news?"

"Nothing. If they were on the plane, they bought the tickets under assumed names and probably kept those names when registering for a hotel room." Vinny was disappointed – he'd transferred in from the Salt Lake City branch office three months earlier, and he knew the investigative prowess of some of the sweepers there. But he also had become aware of the reputation of the sweeper who had eluded them – and if the rumors were to be believed, only one other sweeper in the entire organization was as talented – and that sweeper was now dead.

Phil rubbed his chin and stared at the darkening water beyond the grassy expanse and then spun around again. "OK. This is what I want you to do," he spelled out, his forefinger stabbing at the leathered desk surface. "Get on the phone and call Salt Lake City. If they haven't got their best team already on their way to the Wasatch National Forest, you tell them they have exactly six hours to get there or face the consequences. I don't give a damned how they do it, but I want them into the park and up on the mountain and taking care of things – with or without the official Search and Rescue team – by dawn tomorrow. Mr. Lyle wants there to be no Centre-related survivors to this crash – let's make sure he gets no Centre-related survivors."

"Yes, sir. I'll get on it right away." Vinny turned to leave.

"And see if you can touch base with some of our contacts within the FBI. We need to see what it is that has them so hot and eager to get their hands on Mr. Lyle." Phil's eyes glittered. "If it's damning, then maybe it could be made to be… misplaced?"

Vinny's eyes began to glitter too. "I know just the person to call on that one."

Phil spun back around. This was a nice desk, he decided, but he wouldn't want the responsibility of handling everything that came across it. Not for long, anyway…

oOoOo

Jarod snapped another pencil in half and then threw it across his office in frustration. Other than anecdotal evidence about the skill of George Stoller to stalk and take out whoever he'd been hired to eliminate, and one person's claim that Stoller had gotten ON the airplane with Carl, there had been nothing to go on. And the word from out West was that the storm had kept all the airplanes grounded and not up searching for wreckage and any possible survivors for the entire day. There wasn't enough information for him to run a quick SIM on the situation, and that fact more than anything else was eating at him.

There was a quick knock on his door, and Hendricks stuck his head around the corner. "I'm heading out to a dinner meeting with Coral Jennings – wanna come?"

Jarod remembered the name and the face of the woman who had been a local hero lately in trying to advocate for after-school programs designed to keep young people off the streets and out of gangs after school. She was a personable but daunting lady. Under normal circumstances, having dinner with stimulating company would have been just the answer to his mood. But Emily had said that their brother was coming in for supper. "Nah – I have my brother coming in from Virginia tonight, and my sister's doing dinner for us. Rain check?"

"Sure." Hendricks looked a little disappointed. "You look at wit's end, Jarod."

The Pretender rose and pulled his briefcase up to the desk and threw a few folders into it – including the folder containing the information on Stoller. "I feel as if I've been spinning my wheels all day," he complained as he snapped the briefcase closed noisily. "I don't like feeling out of the loop."

"Tell you what," Hendricks said, walking into the office and putting a friendly hand on the tall man's shoulder. "I'll walk you out to your car, and you can tell me all about how to keep Coral from weaseling concessions from the Foundation while we're still up in the air about who's running the show."

Jarod nodded and shrugged. There was probably little if anything that he could do at the moment anyway. "Let me call Evan," he stated and reached down to his phone to dial a well-known extension. "I'm on my way out, Evan," he stated the moment he had his driver on the line. "I'll meet you in the front."

"So," Hendricks asked once they were out of the office and Jarod had locked the door behind him, "what's next?"

Jarod was the one who reached the elevator first and punched the button that would summon the elevator to take them down to the first floor lobby. "I'm still digging into the assassin angle. There's a chance that the man I'm looking for was on that United flight WITH Carl – and I'm waiting to see the survivors list."

The elevator dinged. "That's going to take a while," Hendricks remarked sharply. "What else?" The two of them stepped into the elevator together, and this time it was Hendricks who pushed the button for the ground floor.

"I'm working on closing loopholes in our security systems," Jarod added darkly. "I don't like the idea that Blair can just make a couple of calls and find out the itinerary of our chairman and sic an assassin on him so easily."

"You're still convinced this is all Blair's doing?"

"Face it, Carl didn't have all that many enemies outside those in the industry," Jarod insisted. "Blair has made public threats – not the least of which was the one he made must this past July, remember?"

Hendricks nodded. It wasn't hard to remember something that had hit national headlines the way Blair's very public altercation with Bennings had. "There's a chance that he was just spouting off…"

Jarod was shaking his head. "No. I've got plenty of evidence that it was anything BUT just spouting off – I just don't have anything solid that would tie Blair to that accident last week with the brakes on his sports car, or that bullet through his window the morning after that."

"Is it Bennings himself this unnamed enemy is after – or is it just someone at the head of the Foundation?"

"I'm not sure," Jarod replied. "Until I find this guy, there's no way to know for sure either."

The elevator door slid open silently, and the two men stepped out into the marble and brass-festooned lobby of the office building. Beyond the glass doors at the side entrance curbing were two limousines – one of which had Evan leaning against it patiently. "You have fun with Coral tonight," Jarod told his superior.

"And you have fun with your si…"

There was the sound of a gunshot – and Jarod whirled when he felt Hendricks spin violently against him with a grunt of pain. "Gun!" he yelled and took Hendricks to the floor with him, pulling his weapon from his shoulder holster and taking aim at the small man in the yellow windbreaker who was obviously stuffing a gun in his pocket as he turned to dash away. A single shot rang out in response, and the yellow windbreaker was tumbling to the ground amid the screams and panicked cries of the Foundation workers nearby.

"Somebody call an ambulance and the police!" Jarod yelled and turned to Hendricks, who was holding his shoulder with a pale face. "Are you hurt badly?" he demanded.

"I don't think so," Hendricks answered through gritted teeth. "What about him?" he asked, pointing with his nose at the figure writhing in pain a few yards away.

"You just stay down and quiet," Jarod instructed him, pulling his hand away from the wound and then helping Hendricks to lie down prone on the floor. "Here – press against it with this," he told him, putting his linen handkerchief into the wounded man's hand and guiding it back to the wound. "I'll be right back."

Very cautiously he rose and walked over so that he could kick away the gun the shooter had used from where it had fallen when the man fell. He eyed the blood that was flowing from the shattered knee, and the grimace on the face of the man. "You'll live," he announced sharply, crouching next to the wounded man with his gun trained. "Which is either good or bad, depending on whether you decide to cooperate…"

"Screw you…" the wounded man ground out.

"Oh, I'd say that it's you that is screwed, my friend," Jarod responded mildly, deliberately not allowing the stress and tension of the moment to influence his tone of voice. "Assault with a deadly weapon, attempted murder – I'd say you're seriously screwed."

The light eyes of the wounded man flicked once to Jarod's face and found the expression there hard and cold. There was no mercy behind those dark eyes – no sympathy for the pain he had inflicted. The shooter closed his incredibly light colored eyes and cradled his shattered and bloody knee with both hands.

Jarod pulled his cell phone from his jacket pocket and punched a button to rapid-dial a number. "Em? Me. I'm going to be a little late for dinner tonight. Something's come up that I have to take care of…"

And the sound of sirens came closer.

oOoOo

"Sydney…"

The old man stirred reluctantly. "I thought you were asleep, Parker…"

"No. Wake up. Isn't that my briefcase over there?"

Sydney opened his eyes and tried to focus them into the haphazard pile of luggage beyond the hearth that was illuminated mostly by the flickering light of the small flame. "Which one?" he asked, not seeing what she was pointing at with a hand protruding from beneath the blanket.

"There – on top of that outrageous pink backpack. Isn't that my briefcase?"

He squinted again. "I think so, Parker," he nodded and closed his eyes again. "We'll check it out tomorrow." He tucked his cheek back down against the top of her head. "Go to sleep, ma petite."

But Miss Parker wasn't sleepy anymore. She was weak, and her stomach was beginning to roil in a none-too-pleasant manner that was keeping her from resting easily. With Sydney's lukewarm confirmation putting an end to her wondering on that account, she needed something else to keep her mind occupied other than the fact that she wasn't feeling very well at all. "Do you think Jordan could really be my son?" she asked after a long moment of silence.

The old man stirred again, pulling her a little closer against him in their flight seats. "What's the matter?" he asked her gently.

"If he is, then what am I going to do?" she persisted.

He took a long, deep breath. His headache was a little better – but not much. "That depends on you, Parker," he murmured, keeping his voice low to prevent the headache from burgeoning again.

She snuggled down against him and tried to ignore the pain in her belly. "If he is, I'm getting him out of there."

"You're ready to play fulltime 'Mommy' to him?" His voice, while soft, was filled with surprise.

"I'm not leaving him to be raised by the Centre," she replied with a touch of bitterness. "I'm not that heartless."

"I never said you were."

"I've just been thinking lately that I don't want him to have to go through the same kind of childhood I did," she announced firmly. "Even if he's not my son, I think I'm going to adopt him outright and give him a home and family life."

Sydney chuckled soundlessly. "Family life?"

"Yeah." She smiled with him. "How do you feel about being called 'Grandpa?'"

She could tell from the way his whole body stiffened slightly that she'd floored him with that one. It took a moment for him to process all of the implications of what she was suggesting. "I think I could get used to it very easily, Parker," he replied eventually, long after moving his head just enough that he could kiss the top of her head when no words could adequately express his emotions for a while.

"Broots would make a great uncle – and Debbie a cousin…"

"She'd probably insist on being your personal and exclusive babysitter," the old man added, finding that thinking about such positive things was actually helping him feel just the tiniest bit better. It was probably lowering the blood pressure or something, he thought to himself in a fit of medical logic.

"I might even introduce Sam as another uncle," she continued, glad that she'd finally nudged Sydney out of his monotone responses and gotten him to participate with her fantasizing.

"Sam?" Sydney mulled that one around in his mind for a while. "You're taking a fair-sized chance with him, aren't you?"

"Not really. I know Sam better than most there, and I happen to know that he's a marshmallow when it comes to little kids."

"Oh?" Sydney actually lifted his head and looked down at her face as she leaned against him. "And how did you discover this – other than hearing about Debbie wiping the board with him at checkers on more than one occasion?"

"Remember when we chased Jarod to that daycare center in Orlando – about six weeks before… Mr. Parker died?" Sydney nodded silently, not wanting to plumb that still-sore subject. "You weren't with us – something about your research…"

"I was finishing a paper on the dynamics of advanced intelligence in relative isolation," he remembered. "Something that Raines desperately wanted me to finish, for some reason…"

"Anyway, you should have seen Sam when he ended up in this small mob of preschoolers. He turned from this big, bad sweeper into a gentle giant – you should have seen it! I think that if I hadn't barked at him and got his attention back on the job at hand, I might have lost him for good…"

Sydney smiled to himself at the thought of the hulking sweeper who so rarely had any emotion on his face at all making himself benign and open to interaction with the very young. "Maybe you're right, then," he responded. "If Sam…"

"Oh!" Miss Parker suddenly pitched forward as she tried to double over. "God!"

"Parker?" He reached for her, catching her by her sides. "What is it?"

"Oh God, Sydney! My stomach…"

"Is it your ulcer?" God, not now, he thought to himself desperately. Not when she's getting ready to put her life together in a healthy manner for the first time!

"I don't know," she groaned. "I haven't felt like this…" She had ended up with her head in his lap and her legs curled up as tightly to her belly as she could manage.

Sydney was scrambling to get the blankets rearranged so that she was adequately covered. His hand brushed her forehead casually, and he jumped as if burned. "Parker! You have a fever!" How could he have missed this before?

"Oh shit! Broots' flu!" She was sick and furious at the same time. "That moron…" Her stomach spasmed again. "Jesus!"

"What are you talking about?"

"The day we left, I chased Broots out of the Centre when he started to come down with his daughter's flu." She was certain that, despite her injuries and feeling rotten at the moment, if Broots were within reach, she would have throttled him right there on the spot. She struggled to sit up. "You need to get away from me, Syd," she winced. "You don't need to come down with this on top of everything…"

"There's nowhere for me to go, Parker – or you either, for that matter." Sydney stroked her hair back. "It's too cold for either of us to be anywhere else. Settle down now – and try to rest."

"If we ever get back…"

"WHEN we get back," he corrected with a sigh.

"I'm going to kill him – slowly," she finished and then curled tighter as another cramp wracked her body. "Oh God, Sydney…"

"Shhhh…" he soothed her, wishing he had access to his medical bag – which had been checked through to San Francisco and could well be either scattered to the winds on the mountainside or buried somewhere in the pile of luggage beyond the fire. His hands smoothed her hair back over and over in a caressing gesture. "We'll be OK, Parker. Just hang in there."

oOoOo

The sun was already set by the time the lobby of the Foundation building had emptied of all but just a few bystanders, the witnesses, and forensics personnel taking pictures and collecting evidence. Yellow warning tape surrounded the area where Hendricks and the shooter had fallen – and it would most likely remain there after the forensics team had left and into the next day. The other uniformed officers had climbed back into their squad cars – and the EMTs had already loaded their gunshot patients into their respective ambulances.

"What we gonna do now?" Lou asked his boss after the second ambulance had taken off down the boulevard with sirens blaring.

"Now we check out this joker," Jarod replied, pulling his hand from his jacket pocket, and with it, the wallet he'd taken from the shooter while waiting for the police and ambulance to arrive.

"Oh, man!" Lou wasn't pleased. "The cops aren't going to be very happy about that when they find out…"

"I don't care," Jarod spat as he stalked off in the direction of his limo – gesturing brusquely to Evan to get behind the wheel. "This is just starting to be too much of a good thing – and I want to know who put this guy up to shooting Hendricks. If I'd left this for the cops to find, I'd never be able to get a head start on figuring out what this guy was doing."

"You think it was Blair?" Lou had to walk fast to catch up to his superior.

"I'm not sure," Jarod answered honestly. "It's too damned early for Blair to start going after Hendricks – I mean, the man hasn't even been confirmed to take over Carl's spot yet."

"If not Blair, then who?" Lou asked, confused.

"That's a good question," Jarod grumbled as he climbed into the passenger compartment of the limo and then moved over so there would be room for Lou to follow him. "Get in. I'm not doing anything without backup from now on." He tapped on the glass so that Evan would turn and open the window. "3786 Franklin Drive," he directed, "as quickly as you can."

"Yes, sir," Evan said and put the big vehicle in gear.

Lou studied his boss. Jarod was normally a rather easy-going and jovial person – except when dealing with the recent attempts on his boss' life. But even then, there had been the glimmer of a sense of humor through the seriousness. Now, however, there was not a sign of that humor. The Jarod Green that sat with him in the back of that limo was all business, and had a deadly serious attitude about him. There were smudges under his eyes that betrayed the fact that he hadn't slept well the night before – which only confirmed the fact that Bennings, the Big Boss as everyone called him, had been a personal friend as well as an employer.

"You OK, Boss?" he finally asked cautiously.

Jarod glanced over at his assistant. Lou was a quiet and capable man, someone that he'd learned early on to trust implicitly. His only flaw was his lack of imagination – he was dogged, however, whenever given a scent and told to follow where it lead. "Yeah," Jarod sat back finally and took a deep breath. "I didn't sleep well last night – I really didn't need another assassination attempt this early on with Hendricks."

"They're talking about putting the planes up in the air tomorrow morning out there, if the weather will cooperate…" Lou mentioned, hoping that hearing a little bit of hopeful news might drag Jarod out of whatever funk he'd gotten himself into. "Maybe we'll find them all alive."

"All of them would be nice," Jarod commented in a brittle tone. "Including the hired killer that got on the plane with Carl. Him I'd like to take apart with a tweezers, personally."

Lou didn't have a response to that. Jarod was in an odd mood – very dark. He'd never seen him like this before, and frankly, he hoped when this was all over that he'd never see the man act like this again.

oOoOo

Erin leaned into Lyle's shoulder and then smiled when he moved to wrap his arm about her and draw her closer. The afternoon had been a delightful respite from the worries of academia – they had wandered through the zoo and then stood for nearly an hour waiting in line at an outdoor café where they'd just finished a delicious meal – and Lyle had once more proven to be fun to be with. He'd talked about anything that had struck her fancy – even told her a little more about his younger days in Africa. Now, as the streetlights began to wink on, she found the prospect of her time with him ending unacceptable.

"I've had fun today," she told him, running her finger along the edge of the collar of his sweat suit. "And it was good to see that you know how to wear something besides a power suit…"

"Excuse me. That power suit is part of what let me entertain you today," Lyle chided her with a wide smile to blunt the edges of the comment. "Right now, I feel like Cinderella – tomorrow, I end up back in my regular rags at my regular job…"

"You have to leave tonight?" Erin was disappointed.

"I have to be at work first thing in the morning," Lyle reminded her apologetically. "Cinderella had to go back to taking care of wicked stepmothers after the ball, you know…"

"Did your fairy godmother give you a similar curfew?"

Lyle turned and studied her face, not failing to note her dancing eyes. "What do you mean?"

"I mean…" Her finger traced the line of his neck up to an ear, raising gooseflesh. "…your fancy coach doesn't turn back into a pumpkin until midnight, right?"

Lyle leaned toward her and breathed in of her soft scent of summer flowers. "Something like that. Why? What do you have in mind?"

Erin's fingers were threading themselves through his hair in a gentle yet stimulating caress. "Hanging onto you until the very last possible moment – maybe even serving you a nightcap to put a perfect end on the perfect day."

Lyle smiled and nuzzled her neck, kissing her very softly and gently. This was nothing like what he was used to – this soft, willing young woman in his arms – and yet there was an air of anticipation between them now that he hadn't expected to hold such a draw. Erin was sweet, kind, honest, trusting – all the things that he'd once thought inferior traits in general, traits that in women were imminently open to manipulation. Why was he so drawn to her? Why now? How long would it last?

"That sounds like a very interesting idea," he whispered into her ear and felt in her leaning even more into him the beginnings of a response that made his heart beat ever so slightly faster. What would it be like, he wondered, making love to a woman who genuinely wanted him, rather than to one who was fighting him for her life or else had been paid to let him work his will upon her? It would be a new and interesting experience, if nothing else. "Are you ready to go?"

Erin nodded contentedly. She had him to herself for a while longer – and that thought made her toes tingle in delight.

oOoOo

"I'm tellin' ya, he didn't have a thumb on his left hand," Clarence insisted loudly. "He kept droppin' things as he loaded up the car…"

The pen moved across the notebook page. "Did you see what kind of car he was driving?" Detective Bill Lowe asked, "note down a license plate…"

"Now what would I have done THAT for?" Clarence was aghast. "All I knew was that they'd been going at it all night – not that he was in there butchering someone…" He rubbed at his face nervously. "You don't suppose he was doin' it with…" He turned green.

"Tell me about him again," Lowe carefully steered the man's thoughts away from the more sensation – and sickening – possibilities. "What color hair?"

"Dark. Relatively short. Clean-shaven guy, and sporting one helluva shiner."

"Which eye?"

"What?" Clarence squinted at the detective.

"Which eye had the shiner?" Lowe sighed. Drunks as witnesses were never fun.

"Oh." Clarence thought for a moment. "Left one."

"How tall? Any idea how much he weighed?"

Clarence squeezed his eyes closed and tried to remember the man as he'd walked to the driver's door from the trunk. "Six foot, maybe – a hundred eighty, maybe two hundred pounds…"

"What kind of car?"

The salesman's hands flew out in an unclear gesture. "Big and black – that's about all I saw."

"And you say you didn't see him carry anything else out except the luggage?"

Slowly Clarence shook his head. "Nope. Nuthin'."

Lowe stowed his notebook and pen in his pocket. "OK, Mr. Evans. Thank you for your time. If you'll talk to the officer over there, we'll need to have a number at which we can get a hold of you – in case we find a suspect."

"Uh…" The idea of letting the cops know how to find him was less than inviting. "Can't I just call in…"

"I don't think so, sir." Lowe walked out of the drunk's motel room and over to his colleague, Stan Bridges, who was standing in the doorway in back of the yellow police tape watching the forensics people go through the blood-spattered room carefully. "Either this isn't the guy we want, or he'd already taken the body to the car by the time our witness there…" He jerked his finger backward over his shoulder at Clarence. "…got a look at him."

"The guy had a lot of balls, hauling a stiff out like that," Bridges, an older man with grey hair in a crew cut to match his hard, hazel eyes, remarked. "Of course, our witness there having passed out for a while doesn't help things…"

"Did we get anything from the motel manager?"

Bridges shook his head. "The room was registered under the name Lyle Parker and paid for with cash. Manager can't even find the pen he used to sign the register with so we can dust it for prints – he says he thinks the guy palmed it."

Lowe just shook his head – and then was struck with a thought. "This guy was too smooth for this to be his first job," he remarked in awe.

"You thinkin' what I'm thinkin'?"

"Let's hit the wires with what we have – and see if there are any other cold cases that resemble this one."

The two detectives took one last look at the scene of horror. "You know, Bill, I hate this kind of shit."

"You and me both, Stan. You and me both."

oOoOo

Sam put the key to the motel room down on the dresser and immediately turned on the TV to look for a current news broadcast.

"It's still a little early out here for news," Broots commented as he dragged his and Debbie's luggage into the room. "And the way it is out there," he gestured at the door and the pouring rain beyond, "I doubt the planes went up today."

Sam's glare touched Broots' sympathetic gaze and then bounced away guiltily. "I'm sorry," the sweeper said finally. "I know I haven't been the most pleasant person to be around…"

"You're worried about Miss Parker," Broots shrugged. "We all are."

"I just get the feeling that I need to be up in the mountains NOW – and not wait for the Air National Guard or the Search and Rescue people…"

"Uh-uhn. No way." Sam turned in surprise at the display of vehemence from the otherwise mousy computer tech. "Don't look at me like that," Broots defended himself. "What am I going to tell Miss Parker if they bring her down from the mountain and you've gone and got yourself lost or killed looking for her without backup?"

"You tell her I didn't ask your permission."

"And you know how far that would fly on a normal day." Broots' voice was mocking.

"I just have this hunch…" Sam's words faltered into silence when he found it almost impossible to voice his thoughts and feelings. "It's like…" He threw out his hands in a futile gesture. "It's like someone's back there telling me, 'you gotta get to her first.'" His shoulders slumped. "I don't know how else to describe it."

"Do you know the park?" Debbie asked in a soft and hesitant voice. "Have you been to the Wasatch National Forest before?"

Sam looked over at her sharply. "No, but…"

"So how would you know where to go from here without somebody showing you the way?"

If it had been anyone but Debbie, Sam would have spat back an answer that basically asserted his preference for independent action. But being as she was one of his favorite young people, and because he respected both her and her father, he merely stared at her for a second and then stalked from the room to stand at the railing of the upstairs motel room, staring out across the skyline at the mountains in the distance.

"Did I say something wrong?" Debbie asked her father.

Broots shook his head and gently closed the door behind Sam to keep the warm air in and not try to warm the whole outdoors. "I think he's just really worried about Miss Parker, Sweet Pea," he said as he drew his daughter into a quick embrace, "and he doesn't want any of Lyle's men to get to her first – dead or alive." He looked back at the door. "And if truth were told, I don't blame him."


	9. Revelations

Chapter Nine – Revelations

"Sorry about being late," Jarod told his sister as she let him through the front door of her house. "Couldn't be helped."

"I swear, the way things work with you sometimes, it's like being the sister of a cop," Emily gave him a hug. "Ethan was starving when he got here, so I'm afraid you're eating leftovers. Sorry…"

"Speaking of whom…" Jarod looked about the living room and stretched his neck to see if he could catch sight of his younger half-brother in the dining room. "…where is he?"

"You talkin' about me, big brother?" Ethan's voice sounded from the side, where he was coming down the hallway to the bedrooms. His face broke into a happy smile as he and his older brother caught each other up in a tight and back-slapping embrace. "So you finally decided to grace us with your presence, eh?"

"You should talk," Jarod gave his brother a gentle punch in the arm. "You're the one who decided Virginia was all the excitement you wanted. How's Mom and Dad – and Jason?"

Emily and Ethan exchanged an indulgent look, and then each grabbed an arm and started pulling Jarod toward the dining room. "They're fine," Ethan assured him. "Mom and Dad send their best – Jason was pissed that I didn't offer to bring him with me."

"He's got school!" Jarod shook his head. "Even a genius has to learn to jump through the hoops and climb the ladders properly before he can play hooky with impunity."

"Tell that to an eighteen year old who graduated high school two years ago and has already moved past his Bachelor's degree to start post-grad studies in Richmond." Ethan shook his head too. "I think I would have had a harder time telling him no if I hadn't already decided to come over on the bike. The kid doesn't like the way I drive that thing…"

"I'm not surprised – I don't like the way you drive that bike. You're damned scary when you get on that thing!" Jarod agreed with wide eyes. "Here and I thought I was the dare-devil of the family!"

"Here," Emily moved past the two men and on into the kitchen. She stopped at the stove to take the simmering teakettle and fill a mug, which she handed to Jarod, and then moved to pull from the microwave a plate she'd set aside earlier. "I have an article to finish writing, boys, so I'll let you two talk about whatever it is you need to talk about. I've got some beer in the fridge for after I'm done, when we three can socialize properly."

Jarod leaned down and dropped a kiss on his sister's cheek as she moved through the dining room again after depositing a well-loaded plate at his normal place at the table. "Thanks, Em. I'll make it up to you, I promise."

"I'm going to hold you to that one day," she smiled up at him in response and headed out into the living room and then down the hallway to her office and the computer that resided there.

"So," Jarod stated after he'd seated himself and had taken the first bite of a tender and delicious pork roast, "I'm assuming this isn't just a social call, since it's usually a case of Em and I coming to Virginia for social occasions. What brings you back to civilization?"

"I need to know," Ethan stated in a stark voice that had Jarod looking at his brother again sharply. "I know something's wrong – I felt it yesterday and it's been haunting me all day today." Jarod's face folded into something approaching guilt. "You know what I'm talking about. What's happened?" Ethan urged again.

Jarod studied his half-brother, wishing there were an easier way to break the news. "There's been a plane crash," he said quietly. "She was on it. We don't know if…"

"She's alive," Ethan filled in the gap immediately, although his gaze had moved on to something only he could see. "She's hurt, and she's cold, but she's alive."

"What about Sydney?" Jarod couldn't help himself – if Ethan knew that…

Ethan shrugged. "I only feel her." He rubbed his right shoulder. "I'm just worried…"

"They say the storm will be clearing sometime in the night," Jarod rushed to reassure his brother, "and that they'll be sending the planes up to look for them at first light again."

"There's danger gathering, Jarod," Ethan told him with worry creasing his face. "She has to be warned."

"What kind of danger?"

Ethan shook his head. "I wish I could see it more clearly. But the voices tell me that it's vital that the warning get through."

Jarod put his fork down and reached for the mug of herbal tea that Emily had poured for him before she'd left the two of them to talk. "Raines is dead," he announced in a flat voice, "and Lyle's probably taken over at the Centre. Nine chances out of ten, if you're sensing danger, it's Lyle deciding he doesn't want any challengers to his authority coming from any left-over branches of his family tree."

"Raines is dead?" Even after all this time, Ethan wasn't entirely sure how he felt about that.

Jarod nodded slowly. "The thing is that I don't know how any warning's going to get through if they don't even know where the wreck is, Ethan," he said gently. "Believe me, if I knew where that plane was, I'd be on my way there already anyway – and not because Parker was on the flight," he told him frankly. "I don't dare have any contact with any of them…"

"I know that," Ethan said sharply. "Neither of us dare have any direct contact – but that doesn't mean that I don't worry about what's going on with my sister, especially in a situation like this one." Then something Jarod said finally registered, and he looked at his half-brother in surprise. "But you said that if you knew where the plane was, you'd be on your way anyway. Why?"

"Because my boss – and one of the best friends I've made since I got away from the Centre – was also on that plane. That's part of why I wasn't able to come home right away. I've been protecting Carl against assassination attempts now for months – and now his successor, IF Carl died in that crash, has just had an attempt made on HIS life." Jarod resumed eating. "I spent the last hour searching his apartment for a hint of who's behind all of this – and I have some interesting reading awaiting me in my briefcase later on tonight.

"I'm thinking of taking the next flight out," Ethan announced somberly. "If and when they find the plane and her – one way or the other – one of us should be there."

Jarod ate in silence for a while, pondering the powerful draw that was calling him to tell Ethan to make arrangements for two rather than one. Staying true to what he knew he needed to do first was more difficult than he'd ever imagined. Still… "I need to finish up the investigation of the attempt today," he told his brother slowly, "and I'll call you when I'm done. If they still need folks to go up on the mountain to help bring back down the survivors…"

Ethan nodded. "I haven't told Em yet," he confessed in a soft voice. "I'm not sure how to tell her."

Jarod glanced up and into the living room, as if expecting to see his sister appear any moment. "You know she's not going to be happy," he told his younger brother apologetically. "She still resents the Centre and anybody remotely involved with it – I didn't even dare tell her that I had my first nightmare last night in a long time, and I know it's because I'm worried about Parker and Sydney being up on the side of that mountain." He shrugged. "Em thought that my lack of sleep was because they were catching up to me again – she has no idea how upsetting it's been to be the one doing the catching up to THEM."

"I'll call Mom – tell her what's going on and that I'm not coming straight back," Ethan sighed. "She won't be any happier about it than Em will, but at least she'll be a little understanding. Will you help me explain everything to Em?"

Jarod used the last piece of pork to clean up the rest of the juices and the leftover potato from his plate. "Yeah," he said finally. "I'll help you – I at least owe Em the truth. Then I'll help you get your ticket. Maybe we can still get you a seat on the red-eye."

oOoOo

Lyle lay very still and aware, examining his feelings in the moment and finding himself bemused and frighteningly confused and adrift. In the darkness, Erin stirred slightly and settled down when she'd nestled herself just a little bit closer to him, already asleep.

How strange it was to relax in bed with a woman – a living, breathing woman at that – nestled in his arms who was there willingly. How strange it had been to have had sex – no, scratch that, to have made love – with someone who actually WANTED him and had actively gone through the motions of letting her desire for him be known. He could now compare the experiences of early that morning – when he'd finally released the life of his Prey back to the bosom of Mother Nature – with the experience he'd just had; and the difference in the way each was equally moving had him utterly flabbergasted.

With his Prey, it had been nothing BUT sex – the pulsing, heart-stopping force of Life itself – made more acute and imminent by the fact that he had slowly closed his hands about her throat to hold the power of Life and Death in his hands for a short time. He had long since become addicted to the climax he could achieve when, at the very moment of his release, the body of his Prey was spasming hard in its final battle for air. It was one of the experiences of the Hunt to which he was most attached – second only to the sacrament of consuming the ritual meal. He'd been initiated as a man into this, and had known nothing else all this time. Prostitutes and mail-order brides – all his experiences as a sexually active man had involved that violent, incredibly satisfying method of release.

And yet, in Erin's arms, he'd discovered a whole new meaning to the act of physical intimacy. She'd done everything she could think of to please him – and surprise of surprises, he'd found that pleasing her in return had suddenly become a very interesting challenge to him. How different it had been to experience her actually climaxing as the result of his lovemaking and having the pulsing of THAT drawing him over the edge into his own release. And what a feeling of tenderness had engulfed them both afterwards, to the point that he lay submissive to her hand while she had cleaned them both with a cool, damp towel and then pulled the covers over them so that they wouldn't get chilled. It had been a feeling of wellbeing and peace that had been overwhelming in its strangeness and languor.

He'd always looked down on and pooh-poohed the idea of romantic love being anything more than lust seen through the rose-colored glasses of wishful thinking. Thanks to so many people in his past who had made it their business to teach him that tender feelings were dangerous and inferior, that the only things that mattered were violence and power and being the one who exercised it first, he'd never allowed himself to actually try to care about anyone or anything other than his rise within the hierarchy of the Centre. And now, just as he ascended the apex of power and influence, he was presented with this contrary experience of love – romantic attachment – that demonstrated that love and romance WASN'T just lust viewed sideways, and that there was a power that existed outside the exercise of violence and control.

He couldn't stay – not like this. The confusion of knowing that there was something beyond the power of the Centre or the exhilaration of the Hunt and its ritual sex was too much to deal with right now. Tenderness – genuine affection – for this soft, sweet, trusting woman cuddled next to him could be his very downfall.

Lyle raised himself up on an elbow and moved a tendril of blonde hair back with a finger gently, wondering not for the first time since their lovemaking if he shouldn't kill her right then and there – if it wouldn't be better for all concerned that he release her soul quickly and painlessly. And yet… In her sleep, Erin smiled and smoothed her hand unconsciously over the warm skin of his lower abdomen possessively, and Lyle's budding urge to protect himself from everything she represented melted into warmth and fondness. He couldn't kill her, he argued with himself. It would be an affront to Nature – at the very least a violation of the rules of the Hunt.

Very slowly, he moved his pillow so that it was soon taking his place at her side so she wouldn't miss him, and then he rose from the bed and rapidly began to collect his clothing and dress himself. He had to get out of there immediately – he had to get away before she awoke and entrapped him with her gentle smile and innocence again. Thankfully, her sleep seemed profound and deep – she didn't even rouse when he turned the light on in her bathroom to retrieve the towel she'd used to clean them both. Habit dictated that he could leave no essence of himself behind – not on anything that could be used as evidence against him later.

He paused in the bedroom doorway, gazing at the woman who had so confounded him and turned his world view upside-down, and engraved the sight of her huddled beneath her coverlet into his mind. He would not see her again – he didn't dare, for a number of reasons. He had the Centre to nursemaid into a new era of profitability and power – that would be more than enough to keep his hands full. And when he hungered for sex, there was always the Hunt. He didn't need the vulnerability of this softer emotional entanglement, and that was what she offered him: a life free of the need for defensive shields and so made vulnerable in the process.

He waited until he'd exited the apartment altogether, being careful to lock it behind him so as not to endanger Erin any more than necessary, before he pulled his car keys from his pocket. He knew his place in the scheme of things – and this apartment, with its warmth and gentle affection and life-affirming passion of a new and strange kind, wasn't it. He had his ritual meal makings in the back of his car that needed to be properly prepared and consumed, and he had the Centre to run from now on. He knew the rules of that kind of life and was comfortable with it and them.

This unexpected detour into normalcy had been a mistake. He should never have come.

oOoOo

Broots paced silently back and forth in front of the heavily curtained window. Behind him, Sam snored loudly – exhausted by the strain of the long drive and the tension that Broots assumed the sweeper to be living under. Debbie, once more, was probably out like a light in the adjoining room, having stayed up late and watched television until he'd finally insisted that she go to bed an hour earlier. It was two o'clock in the morning, and he was the sole insomniac.

The events of the last two days played over and over in his mind, and each time he found them more fantastic and horrifying. What if Sam's instinct had been wrong – and Lyle had only wanted to tell the three of them not to worry? Broots frowned at himself; Lyle was a despicable creature with no humanity or sympathy – and very little time for those who had worked with his sister. No, Sam had been right – Lyle had probably taken over the Centre and sent sweepers out to hunt them down and take them out.

He'd been on the run before – but then, he'd had Jarod calling the shots and keeping them both out of the line of fire, more or less. Still, it was no more pleasant to know that there were sets of crosshairs that would love to train on his back now than it had been years ago.

Jarod. Just thinking about the man made him wonder what the Pretender was doing. There had been a link between Jarod and Miss Parker – not to mention the huge link between Jarod and Sydney. Would the Pretender continue to remain out of the loop, far away from the nexus of the action? He knew Jarod's cell phone number – it had been given to him on the condition that he reveal it to no one, and that he use it only in emergencies. Should he…?

No, if it was two o'clock in the morning here in Utah, it was far too late to make a phone call to wherever it was the Pretender was hiding. Tomorrow morning would be soon enough to contact Jarod and see if he'd managed to garner any additional news that wasn't being spread on the media.

Broots turned around and stared at the desk to the side of the television. That was where he'd put the laptop that he'd brought with him – the one with the firewall that Jarod had shared with him to keep at least one computer safe from Centre spying while still making it possible to access the mainframe. He could find out what was going on that way at the Centre – see if it were true that there was a team of sweepers combing the countryside for him…

With a glance over his shoulder to make sure Sam was still asleep, he carefully pulled the laptop from its protective case and unplugged the telephone for access to the phone line. He booted the system and quickly hacked into the mainframe looking for any recent text strings that included his last name or Sam's. Sure enough, it took only a few moments to bring up transcripts of a discussion between a sweeper in Blue Cove and one in Salt Lake City, the latter bemoaning the fact that they had not seen the three fugitives from Delaware alight from their flight. Broots smiled in satisfaction. Sam had been right – and had kept them all safe.

The memo concluded with a veiled threat to the Utah sweeper to get men into the Wasatch National Forest and up onto the mountain immediately – that Mr. Lyle 'wanted his problem handled.' Broots' blood ran cold. If Miss Parker and Sydney had survived the crash, it looked as if Lyle wanted to rectify that mistake. Sam would need to know this, so he could be on the lookout for sweepers with less benign agendas.

The computer tech saved a copy of the memo onto the laptop's hard drive. He was about to log off when a thought occurred to him. Just as he'd dragged himself home with his flu, Miss Parker had been very worked up over the questionable heritage of her little brother – and Sydney had sent in a complete set of blood samples to a friend of theirs in a genetics lab outside Las Vegas by overnight express. What had happened to that? Was there a response from that lab waiting for someone to remember it existed?

Broots logged out of the Centre mainframe and moved immediately to his private email client – an account he'd created out in the open, where nobody would think to look for him – for outside resources to use when necessary. Just as he'd suspected, there was an email from the former Centre geneticist – a man he and Sydney had helped a couple years back, when the pressure to attempt another clone had finally become too much to bear. Sydney had developed, and then Broots had used his skill with computers to manufacture, a completely bogus ID and personal history for the man so that he could just leave the Centre one night and vanish as if he'd never existed. Broots knew that the moment the man had seen the request, he'd known that these tests would mean evening the score between them all.

The email was sizeable enough to contain a very in-depth and complete report, and Broots opened the email immediately and began to read. As he did, his jaw dropped open – and when he'd finally read the email to the very end, he sat back in his chair in complete shock, trying to wrap his mind around the explosive revelations.

They all knew that the Parker family tree was twisted – even Miss Parker had come to reconcile herself to the fact – but nobody could ever have ever guessed the half of it!

oOoOo

Sydney winced and leaned against the fuselage wall, made flimsy from having been ripped away from itself only a few feet further along. His headache had not improved with the rest and the warmth, mostly because he hadn't had much of a chance to rest at all. Finding a more or less private place where Miss Parker could sit bent over and try to throw up from a stomach twenty-four hours deprived of food without taking her out into the storm hadn't been easy. Now all he could do was wait for her – or wait for a call for help. He closed his eyes, temporarily giving himself respite from conflicting visual images that only made his headache worse. Even in the dark, double vision was no picnic.

The others, thankfully, were asleep – or at least, pretending to be. Not that there was much to be done to alleviate the situation, but he could sympathize with their really not wanting to know what else waited in the wings to make their ordeal any more trying.

"Sydney…"

With a grunt, Sydney pushed himself away from the fuselage and made his way between the edges of the two pieces of metal sheeting he and Bennings had worked so hard to get leaned up against the end of their cabin only the day before. Together, he and Miss Parker had found a relatively sheltered alcove between the two sheets of aluminum and insulation, as well as taken one of the larger suitcases from the pile at the other end for sitting on. He could only barely make out her figure in the darkness. "How are you doing?"

"I feel like crap, what do you think?" she snapped at first, and then reached out a seeking hand. "I'm sorry, Syd – I shouldn't be…" She swallowed against another stomach spasm. "…biting your head off."

"Do you think you dare come back inside, where it's warmer?" he asked, shivering beneath his blanket and wondering how she'd tolerated it as long as she had. He quite honestly didn't have the strength to walk over to where her hand stretched out to him. "You've got to be freezing…"

"That's not why I called you…" she said, bending over to help ease the spasm that she knew all too well would bring nothing up anymore – not even stomach juices. "You need… Ung!... To get my briefcase."

"For heaven's sake, Parker," he frowned at her. "What is it with you and your briefcase? You'd think…"

"My gun's in it," she managed in a single breath, "and the painkillers I use for my migraines. We could use the painkillers – and it would be better if I were the one with custody of my gun… Ung!... don't you think?"

Sydney sighed and tried not to show the wave of dizziness that flooded over him. "When we head back to our seats," he promised in a weak voice, "I'll bring it to you then."

She nodded silently, and then doubled over again. When the long spate of retching passed, she looked over at the silhouette of her old friend in the narrow space between the metal sheets. "You know you don't have to…"

"I know…" he answered, wiping his face down with his hand and wishing that simple act would help restore his equilibrium. "I'd rather, though – unless you don't want me here…"

"No…" This time it was Miss Parker's voice that sounded weak – and she flinched hearing it and knowing how it violated her sense of propriety and independence to have to admit that she genuinely needed Sydney to at least be near. "Don't go…"

"I'm not going anywhere," he promised, knowing it to be more a statement of his own inabilities than reassurance, but unwilling to let her know that. "Are you sure you don't want a blanket out there?"

"No." The refusal was a little stronger, more certain of itself. "I don't want to get it soiled. Oh, damn!" There was the sound of scrambling all of a sudden – and the faint outline of Miss Parker's body suddenly disappeared from view.

"Parker?" Sydney called out in concern. "Parker!"

"I'm OK," her voice floated back to him in a little bit. "I just… This bug hits the intestines as well, it seems…"

"Oh." It was more information than he needed, but it at least disarmed his greater distress on her behalf. Sydney relaxed and leaned once more against the fuselage, pulling his blanket a little tighter about his upper body and trying not to pay much attention to the fact that his left hand was losing feeling in the fingers. He could still move his fingers, and his hand would more or less do as he wanted it to do – and there was little he could do to improve the situation. It wasn't frostbite or blood loss. It was probably nerve damage – and he really didn't want to think about the kind of injury that would have caused it to behave that way.

It seemed like he waited forever, leaning against that cold sheet of metal and insulation – and he was certain that Miss Parker wasn't any more thrilled at the time it took her to finish what she'd needed to do. Finally, however, he heard a rather diminished, "Syd? I could use some help…"

He opened his eyes and pushed away from the fuselage into her general direction again, feeling his way along, only to be met by a thin and obviously shaking Miss Parker halfway to the suitcase. "What…"

"I can't zip them with only one hand," she murmured in a voice that came from the depths of humiliation. "My pants, I mean. I got them up…"

He moved his arms around her and patiently manipulated the zipper of her storm-dampened trousers back up to the waistband without a word. As he did, she leaned into him – hard. "There," he said when finished, "all fixed." He wrapped an arm about her waist, as much to steady himself as to support her. "Ready to go back to our seats?"

She nodded. "For the time being. I covered… that… best I could… Oh, God!" Her stomach spasmed yet again, and she needed the support his arm afforded her to keep from falling down.

"Don't worry about that now," he reassured her as he waited until she was once more upright in his grasp and then led her carefully back over the obstacle course that was the back end of the cabin until they were at their seat again. "Sit down now, and then you can put your head in my lap…"

"The briefcase," she reminded him, pointing. "Sydney…"

The old man sighed and handed her into her seat. She was right, however – having somebody else – like little Emily – discover the gun in the briefcase didn't lead to a very positive image of the future. "All right – wait here."

He picked his way with care around the metal hearth with its simmering log that still erupted with low flames from time to time until he was at the pile of luggage. She'd been right – it was her briefcase all right. A small brass plate near the closures announced "Parker" – something he'd seen a million times before in his association with her. He bent to reach for the handle and very nearly fell into the pile of suitcases when his sense of balance momentarily abandoned him.

"Syd!" he heard her hiss. "You OK?"

He grunted at her, grit his teeth, grabbed for the handle and straightened up again once he had it firmly in hand. It took a moment the world to finally stop tipping at odd angles, and then he was making his way back around the hearth.

"I need to sit down," he demanded, handing her the briefcase and then landing hard in the seat next to her.

"Damn it, you've got more wrong than just a headache and double vision, haven't you?" she asked quietly and intensely. "Why the hell didn't you say something?"

He ignored her ire and her question. "Curl up, put your feet up on the seat, and put your head in my lap again," he instructed her instead, already moving the blankets around that she'd abandoned when her flu had forced her from her rest. "We need to get you warm and keep you that way. It's bad enough you spent all that time in the cold with your fever…"

"Sydney…" she complained, all too aware of what he was doing. She deposited the briefcase against the seat back behind her knees, where it would be out of the way and very much in her keeping, and then obediently tipped to her left and put her head in his lap again.

He reached down next to his seat and grabbed one more log and threw it noisily into the hearth to land next to the burning log. "I'm OK, Parker," he insisted as he finished tucking the collected blankets back about the both of them again. "I'll be OK."

From her extended moment of silence in lieu of a retort, it was very obvious that the both of them now knew that wasn't true – and that both realized that talking about it would accomplish nothing. "Get some rest, Sydney," she ordered in the best imitation of her old fire as she could manage for feeling as rotten as she did. "Something tells me you need it as much as I do."

His right hand landed gently on her head and began stroking her hair over and over again; and it was questionable, even in his own mind, just who it was he was trying to soothe more with the caress.

oOoOo

Ethan stared out the porthole in the fuselage of the jet as it began the slow descent into Salt Lake City, tired to the bone but exhilarated and invigorated as well. It was as if every minute he'd been in the air, traveling west at over six hundred miles per hour, he could feel his connection with his half-sister growing stronger. He was worried – she was feeling even worse now than she had been earlier – but he was hopeful.

In an hour or so, he'd be calling Jarod – reporting that he'd landed safely and was in his rental car, ready to follow the freeway south to where he could turn off to head up into the mountains that were the Wasatch National Forest. It was dark outside, but even in the dim light that illuminated the red-eye flight, he could see by his watch that back East it would be nearly sun-up.

The evening had ended badly. Jarod had kept his promise to try to explain to Emily what was going on, and why he was going to have to take Ethan almost immediately to the airport – and Emily had, as Jarod had predicted, been furious. She'd railed on and on about how the Centre had cheated them all of so many of the better things of life, and demanded over and over again how either one of them could continue to feel any kind of attachment to people who insisted on working there. Ethan's blood ties hadn't mattered to her whatsoever – and Jarod had borne an even fierier blast of anger for having in essence lied to her that morning. He'd said his lack of sleep had had nothing to do with the Centre – or THEM. How dare he!

Poor Emily. Ethan shook his head. That was one half-sister who didn't want to understand the situation – she only knew what kind of life they'd all been forced to live before, and the potential for any involvement – however indirect – for messing up the good life they all enjoyed now. At least Margaret, his foster mother, had been easier to deal with – and she'd promised him to have some words with her daughter later on.

How could he explain to her that the living essence of his half-sister was with him all the time – and that when she hurt, he knew it? How could he explain that he had that same connection with Jarod, with Charles, with HER? How could he explain that protecting those fragile ties to blood kin had become the entire focus of his sanity – even as he'd worked hard at his job with a small software firm?

It didn't matter. His half-sister – the one who wanted everyone to believe that she was completely independent, completely impervious to sentimentalism, completely in control of herself and her situation – needed his help. There were others, too, who were already closer to the situation, poised to head out to lend their help too. He needed to find them – to join his efforts with theirs.

His eyes refocused on the billowy, moon-lit cushion of cloud cover beneath them that was the storm that Jarod had told him had kept the search planes on the ground. Here and there, the cushion was almost translucent – the storm was breaking up at last, at least this far north. Hopefully by the time he'd followed the directions the voices were already beginning to give him to the side of the one whose help he needed to save his half-sister, the storm would have run its course.

It was a race, he realized – a race he didn't dare lose.

oOoOo

Jarod stared at the letter and accompanying photograph that had been included amid Kevin Ganzetti's personal effects that he and Lou had lifted from the shooter's home before the police could get to them. Unable to sleep more than just a few hours, he'd risen and made himself some hot chocolate and decided to start the job of sorting through everything – only to find this apparently innocuous envelope almost at the top of the heap.

It was unbelievable – but here it was, in black and white and the man's own hand at that: Blake Hendricks had set up his own hit – or at least, an attack that would look like a hit. The instructions in the letter were very clear – the shooter was to aim for the shoulder and make sure whatever wound was left wasn't life-threatening. The timing of the shooting was left up to the would-be assassin, with the only proviso being that it take place at the Foundation building itself – and take place when there were plenty of people around.

Jarod threw the letter down on the kitchen table and leaned his unshaven chin on his open palm. Why? What on earth would Hendricks gain by having himself shot?

He straightened suddenly. Being an attempted assassination victim would tend to take any suspicion of wrong-doing away from the would-be victim – convenient, if that victim were also the person responsible for setting up another assassination. The moment he'd thought that, he knew the connection. Hendricks had been the one to set up the contract negotiations with Stoller on Blair's behalf. Hendricks HAD to be in Blair's back pocket.

But how to prove it?

Jarod stalked to his office and booted up his computer – and promptly hacked into the phone company database. He researched both Hendricks' home phone and cell phone lines – and with the latter finally hit pay dirt. Two calls – each nearly ten minutes in length – had been made four days earlier. One of those calls was to a known associate of Blair. The other he was sure, and verified quickly with his notes, belonged to George Stoller.

Hendricks - a Blair mole! How the HELL had he let this happen?

The he shook his head. Hendricks had been involved with the Bennings foundation since long before he'd moved to Philadelphia – he had nothing to do with how Hendricks had weaseled his way into the organization. What he DID have something to do with, however, was what he was going to do, now that he knew that there was a viper nesting in the bosom of the Foundation.

He glanced at his watch – it was almost five-thirty in the morning, too darned early to put a call in to Lou's home yet. No, he had about an hour before he'd have to take his own shower and prepare for another day working ostensibly for a man who was working for someone trying to do in the Bennings Foundation and all that it stood for. He sat forward to the computer again and slipped quietly out of the phone company's computer and directly into the Bennings Foundation mainframe. First on his list of things to look up was Hendricks' resume – there should be plenty of places to look into Hendricks' past history listed there.

He saved the file to his hard drive and immediately printed out a copy, and then slipped out of the Foundation mainframe and started a search for the organizations and people Hendricks had listed as either past employers or references.

He'd be damned if he let a traitor continue at the top of the food chain – and if that traitor had had any part in what had happened to Carl… Jarod shook his head. No, he wouldn't think about that now. Now he needed to make his case against Hendricks and, by association, Blair. AND he had to figure out how to get this material BACK into Ganzetti's house again, so that the cops could find it once they figured out who he was.

And that would have to the top of his list of things to do in the morning.

Jarod sighed and turned off his computer. He might as well shower now – he'd drive himself into the Foundation today, and stop at Ganzetti's on the way. With luck, the cops wouldn't have been there at all yet.

oOoOo

The wail of a fire engine roaring past her apartment complex roused Erin, and she rolled back toward the center of the bed with the intent of snuggling once more against Lyle's warm side. Then she came more fully awake when she realized the only thing in bed with her at the moment was the pillow from his side of the bed, laid lengthwise so that she would have something to snuggle against. She put out a hand, and the sheet on that side of the bed was cold.

He was gone, and had been for quite a while now.

She relaxed back into her pillow, mildly disappointed. Then again, she reminded herself that he'd told her very clearly that he had a curfew – that he had to be back at work, wherever that was, first thing in the morning. They'd joked for a while about his car turning into a pumpkin – but evidently he'd been serious. And evidently he was kind enough to not want to awaken her when the time came for him to leave.

Ah well. She reached over and pulled the pillow to her chest, still able to smell some of his scent on the pillowslip. The evening had ended very well indeed – and Lyle had been a very innovative and yet conscientious lover. If she hadn't known better, she would have sworn that this had been his first time with a woman. She'd had to tell him how to please her – where to touch her, how to touch her – and she'd sensed his surprise when she'd done some of the things her various boyfriends and live-ins had taught her pleased men.

Lyle was such an interesting set of contradictions. On the outside, he was confident, casual, self-assured and almost cocky – and yet on the inside, she had the sense of a shy and wary person who didn't show his face very often. It was that person who had eventually been the man she'd made love to the night before – his wistful nature had been irresistible.

Smiling to herself as she remembered the events of the evening, she rolled so she could look at her alarm clock. She had another hour yet before she had to get up to get to her first class on time. She groaned and rolled toward the pillow that had been Lyle's again, catching it to her and hugging it to her chest. She could dream of making love to him again – and hopefully he'd show up in the deli within the next week again, so they could make plans for another day together. Maybe he'd even call sometime during the day and finally give her a number at which she could reach him.

And hopefully Cherry would show up with a halfway decent excuse for her absence, so that they could get on with writing that research paper.


	10. Convergence

Chapter Ten – Convergence

Centre Security Specialists Al Douglas and Tom Coachman had begun the drive north from the Salt Lake City branch office of the Centre at six o'clock in the morning – and neither were happy about their new assignment. The twisting roads were dangerous because of the snow and ice that the departing storm had deposited, and the prospect of trudging for hours through knee-deep drifts hiking up a mountainside had them both in a bad mood.

Granted, they had all the proper clothing and equipment either on them or in the trunk of the car for spending time in the chilled outdoors of the Wasatch – and their weapons were carefully stowed in plastic bags in extra-deep pockets of their down-filled jackets. But even the most careful preparation and a chilling ultimatum from their branch manager couldn't change the fact that they were going to be searching a huge, one million plus square miles' worth of haystack. Without the slightest idea of which mountain to search in the first place, or how high to climb before getting anywhere near the crash site, both of them had decided early on that they were on a snipe hunt if the Tower expected them to do this on their own.

Besides, it would have been nice if the head office in Blue Cove could have decided just who it wanted them to nail. Yesterday, the orders had been to corral, transport and eliminate a rag-tag trio from Delaware – a computer tech, his daughter and a renegade sweeper – who were to be waylaid getting off a plane at the airport. Today, rather than attempt to find the trio who'd slipped through their nets, the order came down for them to handle a termination order on the old Chairman's daughter and her shrink sidekick. Normally, one didn't question directives from Blue Cove. One ordinarily said, "yes, sir," and did as was asked without any questions whatsoever. But this spate of chasing after and eliminating people getting clean away from the masterminds in Blue Cove itself was getting ridiculous – and expensive. The Salt Lake City branch budget couldn't handle too many wild goose chases without additional funding coming from somewhere.

But it was a sweeper's job to do as he was told; and so here they were, on the road to Ogden and points beyond, on the trail of possible survivors of an airline crash. From the glances the two of them had been exchanging already, both knew they were screwed. Knowing where to go in the first place demanded they either get into the Search and Rescue effort or shadow them up onto the mountain, which meant they weren't going anywhere until the aerial search had spotted wreckage. Then the challenge would be to get up to the crash site, slip away from their Search and Rescue associates and THEN "take care of business" – and take care of any inadvertent witnesses after that.

God only knew how long that would take.

"Ya wonder why suddenly we're supposed to take out old man Parker's daughter," Al mused aloud after yet another interminable silence. "I mean, I trained under her when I first got started in this racket…"

"Who cares," Tom retorted without moving his eyes from the road. "We go in, we take them out, we go home. It ain't rocket science, Al."

"Don'tcha wonder why it is that suddenly WE have to clean up the Tower's messes?" Al continued stubbornly. "I mean, they got the best sweepers over THERE… So what are we doin', chasin' first a bunch of refugees and now makin' sure some crash victims are dead?"

"Face it, the Tower's probably up to it's ass in police investigation of old man Raines' murder," Tom replied with a shrug. "And besides, that's why they got offices all over – whatever the Tower wants on this side of the world, the Tower can have as long as it has an office in the general vicinity."

Al stared up the slope next to the road, up into the thick stand of pine trees. "You ever gone hikin' up here, Tom?"

Tom glanced over at his comrade in surprise. "Hell, no! I'm just as happy stayin' in Salt Lake City, thank you. I don't normally 'do' mountains and hikin' and stuff." He glanced again. "What about you?"

Al shrugged. "Oh, I've been up around Logan skiin' a couple of times, but that's about it." He shook his head. "One thing I DO know is that I wouldn't want to be wandering around out up there in the trees and the snow without first letting someone know where I was goin'…"

"We can't do that!" Tom exclaimed. "We gotta get up there, get the job done, and get outta there without anybody knowin' what we were doin'."

"That's gonna be a little hard when we have to join a Search and Rescue team just to get to the right place, now, ain't it." Al wasn't asking a question.

The two sweepers exchanged a serious look between them before Tom put all his attention on the road again. "We'll figure it out when we get to Ogden," he assured himself and his colleague without sounding entirely certain.

oOoOo

Broots watched as Sam pulled a heavy cardigan sweater out of his duffel bag and slipped it over his head. "I'm going to call Jarod," he announced in a quiet voice, knowing that the news would probably shock the sweeper.

"What the Hell for?" Sam demanded with a frown, settling the long, thick sweater comfortably over his hips and adjusting the fit of the shoulder holster beneath it. "And how the Hell do you know how to…"

"He called me, remember? I got his number then," Broots explained defensively. "He'd seen the news about Raines' getting killed and had tried to call both Sydney and Miss Parker – calling me was a last resort, I guess…"

"That answers my second question," Sam admitted, picking up his wallet from the nightstand next to the bed and stuffing it in a back pocket of his trousers, "but that still doesn't explain…"

"He has access to resources that we… I… don't… or haven't had lately. Maybe he's heard something…"

Sam shook his head. "They haven't even sent the planes out again yet," he chided sharply. "You heard the newscast…"

"OK, fine, yeah, I heard," Broots got even more defensive. "But you can wait until I've touched base with Jarod – in case he knows something that will help you find Miss Parker faster – can't you?"

Sam stared at the stubborn computer technician for a moment, and then he relented. "All right," he sighed deeply. "Call the Lab-Rat, see if he has any news. But if he doesn't know anything new, then I'm outta here…"

"I got it!" Broots declared and pulled his cell phone out and dialed.

The phone rang twice. "What?" was the half-angry, half-frustrated voice on the other end of the line.

"J…Jarod? It's me, Broots…"

"Mr. Broots." Jarod seemed to be putting aside whatever it was that had him upset. "Any news?"

"That's why I was calling," Broots smiled at Sam and turned away to give himself the illusion of privacy. "We've been on the move…"

"I'm not surprised," Jarod interrupted wryly. "I bet Lyle has a lookout…"

"…But Sam is getting ready to head off to join up with the Search and Rescue effort," the computer technician continued. "We were hoping maybe you'd heard something from a resource that we wouldn't normally have access to…"

Jarod frowned and rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Well," he said finally, having come to a decision, "it isn't exactly news, but…"

"What?" Broots' voice was urgent. "Anything!"

"Ethan's on his way out your direction, if you're anywhere close to where they think the plane went down…"

"We're in a motel on the outskirts of Ogden," the bald man exclaimed.

"Broots, he claims he knows that she's alive – hurt, but alive." Jarod told him quietly. "How far you want to believe him…"

"This is Ethan we're talking about, right? The one who 'hears the voices?'"

"That's Ethan," Jarod admitted. "He says that there's danger coming closer to her, though – and that he needs to be there to help her."

"Lyle sent sweepers to the airport to try to catch Sam and Deb and me," Broots shook his head and held up a delaying hand when Sam tapped him on the shoulder impatiently. "Hang on, Jarod…" He whirled on the sweeper. "Hold on – this could be important. OK?" He waited with frustrated impatience of his own until Sam conceded again. "I'm back," he spoke into the phone again. "Lyle tried to get us – so it stands to reason that if he's making a move on the Chairman's job, he'd want Miss Parker out of the way…"

"And Sydney too," Jarod agreed darkly. "Sydney knows where too many of the Centre skeletons are buried for Lyle to allow him to live to oppose his Chairmanship."

"Do you think Ethan's 'voices' could help Sam find them?" Broots asked with a note of hopefulness in his voice. Jarod was silent for a long moment. "Jarod? You still there?"

"Yeah," the Pretender replied slowly. "I don't know if his senses are that capable, Mr. Broots – but he's been uncanny the couple of times he's been involved in getting either Parker or me out of serious trouble."

"Sam's standing here, ready to walk out the door. Should he wait?" Broots made the question clear enough that Jarod would know that Sam's next actions depended upon what he said next.

"Yes," Jarod replied at last. "It might be better if the two of them worked together."

"Do you have a way to get in contact with him, then, so we can tell him where we are?" Broots demanded next.

"Yeah." There was the sound of movement from Jarod's end of the line. "Take this number down – it's Ethan's cell." Jarod rattled off thirteen numbers quickly.

Broots repeated the number back to him for confirmation. "We'll be in touch…" he promised and then disconnected the call.

"What?" Sam demanded, one hand on his hip.

"Ethan's on his way," Broots told him, "and he… he can be damned spooky. He can help lead you to Miss Parker – who Jarod says is still alive."

"Ethan?" Sam's mind quickly flashed on the face of the willowy and slightly terrorized young man who, according to all the reports, was Miss Parker's half-brother. He'd also been the one responsible for a bomb that demolished an unused section of the New York subway system. "So what?"

"Jarod says to wait for him – he can help."

Sam's gaze cast about the motel room in frustration, and then he flopped to a seat on the edge of his bed and reclined slightly. "God, but I hate doing what that damned runaway lab experiment tells me to do," he grumbled hotly. "I want to be on my way – at least THEN I'd feel like I was doing something productive…"

Broots ignored Sam and dialed instead the number Jarod had given him.

"Hello?" came a rather hesitant voice.

"Ethan? M…my name is Broots, and…and I work with your s…sister, Miss Parker…"

"Yes?"

"I just got off the phone with Jarod… you know, your brother… and he told me your phone number so…"

"You know Jarod?"

Broots smiled grimly. "Yeah – he's helped me out of a jam a couple of times."

There was a long moment of silence on the other end, then: "She says that the big man with you needs to wait for me to get there – does that make sense?"

"Yeah," Broots blanched at having the message literally pulled from his mind in that way. "That's kinda the reason I'm calling. We're in the Pine Tree Motel, on the south side of Ogden - room 38."

"Pine Tree Motel, room 38," Ethan repeated, sounding a little spacey. "I'll be there."

Broots pulled the phone from his ear as the call was disconnected from the other end and turned to stare at Sam. "He knew about you – said that you needed to wait for him."

"Jarod told him…"

"Jarod didn't know anything about what we're doing before I called him just now," Broots shook his head. "Man! This gives me a major-league case of the creepy-crawlies."

"And it leaves me sitting here with my thumb up my ass when I could be on my way up into the mountains…"

"If Ethan's really is the way Miss Parker told me once, he'll give you a head-start on anybody trying to find them," Broots insisted stubbornly.

"Yeah, and pigs fly," Sam bit off tersely.

"Damn it, Sam…"

"Good morning, Daddy, Sam," Debbie said as she poked her head through the adjoining room's door. She eyed Sam in his cold-weather dress and then her father, in his crumpled tee shirt and jeans. "Everything OK?"

"Just peachy, Short Stuff," Sam growled and grabbed up the television remote to turn on the device to the closest thing to a news station he could find. The plane crash had been big national news - at least he could find out the moment the rest of the world did when the planes went up into the sky to start the search again at last.

oOoOO

"Oh shit!" Detective Stan Bridges' face reflected the shock and horror that had been the response of everyone involved who had gotten a glimpse of the contents of the rusted dumpster behind the Independence Motel. "This has GOT to be the vic we've been looking for."

Bill Lowe nodded without removing his hand from his mouth and nose. Even that wasn't helping stave off the stench of God only knew what other kind of filth had been deposited along with the body of the young Asian woman, however – a stench that was coming about as close as anything ever had to nauseating the veteran detective to the point of losing his morning donut and coffee. "Oh, man - look at that!" he mumbled from behind the hand, pointing with the other to the many small cuts that had been made over the entire front of the body, cuts that had bled and eventually covered the body with a thin film of crimson. "What kind of a monster would do that to a person?"

"A very sick and perverted one." Bridges replied and slapped a hand on Lowe's back to pull his partner away from the dumpster as the forensics team and the medical examiner arrived on the scene. "Let's let these guys do their job," the younger detective turned away from the rusted grey garbage container gratefully and walked up to a uniformed police officer. "Who called it in?"

The officer pointed out a thoroughly shocked and sickened looking man in ragged clothing who was squatting against the brick wall of the building across the alleyway from the dumpster with his forehead in his hand. Next to him stood a man in white trousers and shirt, wearing an apron. "The guy who originally found her's just a drunk looking for a good place to crash," the officer clarified before either detective could make a move. "He had quite a job trying to convince Mr. Rosetti there, manager of the pizza parlor, to let him use the phone."

"You got his statement?" Lowe asked.

"For what it's worth," the officer shrugged. "Drunk's name is Skitter – that's all he'd give me other than the fact that he just walked up to the dumpster and found her like that!"

Bridges, however, had walked over to the man squatting against the wall. "Hey, Skitter," he called, bringing the drunk's head up out of his hands.

"Yeah?" Bleary blue eyes struggled to focus on the face in front of him.

"We're going to need to you to come down to the station and give us a complete report," he told the man.

"Yeah, OK…" Skitter scratched absently at the front of his filthy tee shirt inside his equally filthy and ragged overcoat. "I dunno what I kin tell you other than what I done already said to the other cop…"

"It's just SOP," Bridges assured the man. "Play your cards right, and you might even get a hot cup of coffee out of this."

The drunk's face registered clearly what he thought of coffee, and Bridges reached down and dragged the man up by the arm. "You go on with Officer Donaldson here, and he'll see to it you get whatever you need – within reason."

Lowe had closed in on the pizza parlor manager. "…and he wouldn't leave! Finally I said, 'OK, so show me what you talkin' about already.' Then he brought me out here." The man gave a glance over his shoulder and then shuddered as the medical examiner's team hoisted the body, already garbed in a black, plastic bodybag, over the side of the dumpster and into the care of other officers, who deposited it on a low gurney. "What kinda girl get that kinda mischief done 'er, eh?"

"We'll need to have to go with the officer there, and make a complete statement," Lowe urged the man to move finally.

"I gotta lock up the store," the manager balked at last. "I don' need nobody to come in an' rob me blind!"

"OK," the officer nodded agreeably. "I'll follow you, you lock up, and then we can take a trip to the stationhouse. It shouldn't take too long…"

The medical examiner waved the two detectives over the moment the pizza manager had left with the police officer in tow. "Well, you two really scored a serious nut-case with this one," he commented dryly.

"What do you mean?" Lowe asked, not entirely sure he wanted to know.

"I'd say your vic went through hell before she died," the ME sighed. "From my preliminary examination, I'd be willing to bet cause of death was strangulation – but not until she'd been raped and cut. You saw all those little cuts?" The detectives nodded in unison. "Those were peri-mortem. It looks as if he wanted her to bleed profusely while still alive. There's one rather alarming post-mortem injury, however – actually…" the ME rubbed his chin thoughtfully and looked about as sickened as either detective had ever seen him, '…it looks as if she were butchered for a pound of flesh."

"Say what?" Bridges' face had lost all its color.

"The killer took a healthy slice of her buttock with him," the ME reported grimly. "God only knows why. And it looks as if he's had practice – there were no hesitation wounds…"

"Any ID?" Lowe swallowed hard.

The ME waved his hand at the dumpster, and the law enforcement personnel still standing hip-deep in detritus. "If there's nothing in there to tell us who she was, I'm sure I'll get some kind of hit from fingerprints or dental records. Let's hope our monster discarded all her belongings in the same place, eh?" He started toward the van into which the body had been placed. "Come down to the morgue in a few hours, I should have more for you then."

"Oh thrills." Lowe commented softly. "I hate trips to the morgue."

oOoOo

Jarod rose and shook the hand of the police detective. "And what can I do for you today, Detective Franks?"

The detective pulled a photograph from his open briefcase on the floor next to him and slipped it across the surface of Jarod's desk. "Does this man look familiar?"

Jarod glanced at the photo and then back up into the policeman's face. "That's the man who tried to shoot Blake Hendricks yesterday."

"His name is Kevin Ganzetti, and he's got a yellow sheet a mile long – mostly for assault and battery and strong-arming for one of the local loan sharks. Lately, however," the detective relaxed back into the comfort of the chair that faced the desk, "some of his jailhouse associates tell us he's been trying to break into the murder for hire business."

"Oh?" Jarod folded his brow just so, as if this news were a surprise to him. "Really?"

"We found these…" the detective reached into the briefcase again and brought up two plastic protective covers used to preserve documents and any forensic evidence on them, which he then slipped across the desk at Jarod as he had the photo. With an obviously keen watchfulness, he took note of Jarod's expression as the security chief of the Bennings Foundation lifted and then read the letter wherein Blake Hendricks essentially set up his own hit.

Jarod schooled his expression into just the right amount of additional shock. "You're telling me that Hendricks did this to himself?" he asked in an aghast tone. "Whatever for?"

Franks began pulling in the evidence he'd just revealed and collected the lot in one hand. "I was hoping, perhaps, you could tell me."

The Pretender eyed the police detective calmly and carefully. This was no stupid cop with whom he could play games. Franks had unraveled the mystery of the shooter's name and had searched the apartment probably just after he'd replaced everything there – and while he knew that he'd left no fingerprints on anything he'd taken a look at, he could tell Franks knew something was in the air here at the Foundation. "Can I be candid with you and have it be off the record?" he said finally, leaning forward on his desk and folding his hands together.

Franks straightened after retrieving one last document from his briefcase and relaxed back into the chair again, apparently holding the document in reserve for the moment. "Sure."

"We aren't exactly publicizing this, but our CEO, Carl Bennings, was on that United flight that went down in Utah."

Frank's face showed his surprise. "I didn't know that…"

"Few do," Jarod assured him. "But that's why this just doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Hendricks stands to step into Carl's position here at the Foundation with a real minimum of fuss – why would he set up his own hit, or something supposed to look like a hit, NOW?"

"That's a damned good question, Mr. Green," Franks stated with a furled brow. "A damned good question. You don't suppose this has anything to do with that altercation that your Mr. Bennings had with that arms dealer – what was his name…?"

"Blair," Jarod replied quickly. "Joseph Blair."

"You don't suppose this has anything to do with that, do you?"

Jarod shrugged. "Not that I can think of – but I think it might be a good idea to search into our Mr. Hendricks' background."

"There is one other thing I thought you might be interested in," Franks stated after a short silence between them. He handed the last document across the table. "It seems there was one more gunshot fired in your lobby downstairs than originally reported."

"Oh?" The look on Jarod's face this time was pure surprise.

"The forensics team found a third bullet – buried in the upholstery of one of the chairs near the front of the lobby." The detective pushed the top document aside to reveal that there was one underneath. "Computer modeling gives us the trajectory of the third shot – and you can see we've plotted its course in red." His finger indicated the line. "This is Mr. Ganzetti's shot at Mr. Hendricks, this is your shot at Mr. Ganzetti, and THIS one…"

Jarod easily came to the same conclusion. "It would appear that Mr. Ganzetti wasn't intended to survive the attack."

"It seems not," Franks stated as he once more collected his documents and this time snapped his briefcase closed. "We both have a puzzle on our hands, Mr. Green. I'd like to think that we could cooperate with each other – maybe take a hand in solving each other's mysteries…"

"What are the charges against the first shooter – the one Hendricks hired?"

"We've got Mr. Ganzetti on discharging a firearm in a public place, conspiracy to commit murder and attempted murder." Franks gazed evenly at the Pretender. "I take it if we discover any further evidence against your Mr. Hendricks, you would like to know about it?"

"We're in the position of convening a meeting to select our new CEO, Detective," Jarod stated flatly. "If the man currently filling in for that position is involved in illegal activities…"

Franks rose. "I see we understand each other then." He extended his hand. "I trust we will be talking together soon?"

"You can count on it," Jarod shook the man's hand warmly.

oOoOo

Sydney lifted George's head and helped him take a few sips from the water in the tall glass Natalie had salvaged from the ruined galley behind the pile of luggage to wash down the migraine medication from Miss Parker's briefcase.

"What's in the pill, doc?" the injured man asked.

"It will help with your legs," Sydney responded, tipping the glass back to his patient's lips again. "Trust me."

George put up a hand to help with his own drinking – like all of them, he was thirsty.

Several similar glasses had been held over the glowing coals of their hearth to melt snow into drinkable liquid over the course of the morning. The discovery of those glasses had meant that the survivors no longer were forced to collect handfuls of snow and eat it – and then risk hypothermia, as they had the day before.

Natalie had also finally begun to function to the point that she was able to indicate where, if at all, any food that would have remained from the dinners served on the flight an hour before the crash would have been stowed. From the mess, several dinner rolls, a few meat patties and plastic envelopes of salad dressing had been salvaged – and three of the dinner rolls immediately split in half and distributed to the hungry survivors.

"Where'd you find those pills?" Bennings came up behind the old psychiatrist and demanded.

"I found my briefcase," Miss Parker replied from where she remained curled on her side and covered with a blanket. "It had my migraine medication in it – I figured George was hurt badly enough…"

"You found your briefcase?" Bennings sounded skeptical.

"It was sitting right out where I could see it," she explained with more patience than usual. "You have a problem with that?"

Sydney stared up at the executive, who shrugged to dismiss the scrutiny of the two other people who were both relatively unscathed and in full possession of their wits. Carl gathered his blanket a little more securely about his shoulders and moved to the pile of luggage. "Maybe I should look through some of this stuff, just to see what else is in there that we might find of use."

"Go for it," Miss Parker growled from her makeshift sickbed. "What harm could it do – everyone who'd give a damn is dead…"

Bennings, buoyed by the Parker woman's apparent support, reached for another expensive looking black briefcase that was resting more or less on the top of the heap. He played with the catches for a while with no luck – the case was locked tightly. Finally, frustrated, he reached down for a piece of scrap metal that he then used to pry up the snaps. He opened the case and stared down at the contents.

"Well," Miss Parker's weakly acerbic voice floated across the cabin, "what treasures did you come up with this time?" When he looked up at her, Miss Parker could see that his emerald eyes were shocked.

"What is it?" Sydney asked, concerned when his fellow survivor didn't answer.

Bennings reached into the case and pulled out a photograph and handed it down to Sydney – a picture of himself. He then reached in and pulled out the stock of a very expensive rifle.

"Oh, Geez!" Miss Parker breathed. "What the hell…"

"Someone on this plane was supposed to kill me, I think," Bennings stated, his voice almost a whisper from shock and a sudden, gripping fear. "What else could this be?"

"Why would someone want to do that?" Sydney asked with a frown.

"Put that thing away!" Miss Parker hissed at the executive. "And put it somewhere where little kids and people who don't know how to handle such things can't get at it!"

"But…" Bennings turned, the rifle stock clearly displayed to all of his fellow survivors.

"Whoever owned this gear is dead," Sydney stated quietly from his position next to George and handed the photograph back up to Bennings. "I mean, face it – none of us here is an assassin, right?" He gazed evenly at the tall, sandy-haired man until his words finally penetrated. "Miss Parker is right – we don't want that thing in the hands of anybody who wouldn't know how NOT to hurt someone else. Put it away and then put it somewhere safe."

Bennings took the photograph back and turned it over absently – and his face first went blank, and then clouded. "What is it now?" Sydney asked.

Bennings only shook his head. It meant nothing to any of these people that the writing on the back of the photograph belonged to his assistant, Blake Hendricks – or that the instructions to the killer had been clear: make one clean, killing shot; and then stay out of circulation for a while. "Nothing," he answered eventually, thrusting the photograph back into the briefcase with the rifle stock.

"I'll watch it for you while you're out," George offered, easing himself up on one elbow to watch the proceedings.

Bennings nodded and did his best to close the latches that he'd pried open. Not having much luck putting things back together, he carried the briefcase over to where he had been resting next to George and slipped the case under the pile of clothing that pillowed the man's head, elevating him slightly. "You don't mind?"

"Not at all," George replied. "At least I can be a little useful, lyin' here while the rest of you all scrounge for things."

In the hearth, the log that had been burning slipped a little further into the bed of hot coals that was all that remained of the logs that had come before. Six survivors with nothing survival related to keep them active and occupied, sat staring at each other and at their modest fire, waiting for rescue – or whatever was going to come next – with shell-shocked expressions.

oOoOo

"Well, what did he say?" Tom asked as Al climbed back into the car.

"He said anybody who wanted to work the Search and Rescue on this one is gathering up at the Ranger's compound up by Eagle Rock campgrounds," the sweeper pointed. "He said to follow this road another six miles and then take the first left after the bridge."

"I love these accurate directions that only a local can follow," Tom grumbled as he put the car in gear and eased it back out onto the highway.

"Are we going to join the official Search and Rescue effort?" Al asked next, his eyes glued to his companion's face.

Tom shrugged. "Do we have any choice at this point?"

"Hell – according to that fellow back there," Al jerked a thumb over his shoulder, "there hasn't' been a single word from the Air National Guard yet."

"Why isn't that surprising?" Tom responded with a brittle frustration.

"What would happen if we hung back?" Al asked suddenly. "We stick around the Ranger's compound until we can see that they're moving out, and then follow behind them at a distance…"

"And if they find the crash site and Miss Parker is among the survivors, just how the Hell do you suggest we get to her to make sure she doesn't remain a survivor?" Tom bit back.

"We are SO screwed…"

"You're just figuring that one out, Sherlock?"

oOoOo

There was a single, soft knock on the motel room door, and Sam was up on his feet to throw the door open with a single bound. "You're Ethan?" he demanded of the slightly built young man with the same dark hair that both his half-siblings had in such abundance.

"Yeah," Ethan said after recovering from his shock of the quick answer to his knock.

"Are you ready to get moving?" Sam asked immediately, dragging Ethan into the room by an elbow and then reaching for a warm parka.

"We need to hurry," Ethan nodded. "They're ahead of us already."

"Who?" asked Broots from his chair in front of the laptop that he had plugged into the phone line.

Sam glared over at him. "Who do you think? The Centre – that's who. Sweepers from Salt Lake City, no doubt, probably their best marksmen who've been tapped for temporary cleaner duty." He rounded on the shy young man. "How come Jarod's not with you?"

Ethan shook his head. "Jarod is torn. He wants to be here very much – but he doesn't. He tried to make a life for himself that didn't include the Centre in any way – and now that life is threatened."

"Doesn't he care about Miss Parker and Sydney anymore?" Broots was aghast. "After all this time…"

"He cares," Ethan stated with a sad nod, "more than he wants to."

"This is all nice and cozy, but we have a mountain to climb and some friends and family to keep safe from all the gathering bad guys," Sam practically snarled. He pointed to Broots. "You have my cell phone number, right?"

"Yeah…"

"Good." Sam once more grabbed Ethan's elbow. "We're off. Keep in touch."

"Be careful, Sam," Debbie spoke up from the edge of the bed, from which she'd been watching the sweeper closely for a while now.

Sam's glare softened as he turned back. "You take good care of your Dad, Short Stuff – and I'll be back with Miss Parker and Sydney before you know it."

oOoOo

"Sue!" Erin waved to her friend – Cherry's roommate – from across the Student Union lobby and grabbed up her backpack. "Wait up!"

"Hi, Erin," Sue Choi waited until the blonde was closer before answering. "How's it going?"

Erin resettled her backpack's strap over her shoulder. "I was wondering whether you'd seen Cherry…"

"Last I saw of her, she was getting ready to go out with this guy she met in town somewhere." Sue threw her long braid back over her shoulder. "She said that he was some kind of businessman from out of state. I saw him briefly when he came to pick her up – very smart, very easy on the eyes."

"And she hasn't come back to the apartment since?" Erin's eyes were wide.

Sue shook her head. "Come to think of it, I haven't seen her since she left for her date."

Erin was now seriously worried. "How long were you going to wait before reporting her missing?" she asked anxiously.

"You know Cherry," Sue waved her hand dismissively. "She gets all enamoured of a guy and takes off to spend a couple of days with him. I tell you what…" She leaned forward. "If she isn't back by tonight, I'll call the police. How's that?"

Erin shook her head. "She has this paper due – we were supposed to write it together. I can't see her sacrificing her grade in Sociology for a guy, do you?"

Sue hesitated and thought for a moment. "I don't know, Erin," she said finally. "Cherry can get herself thoroughly screwed up sometimes – and this guy sounded like someone she just might let herself get screwed up over."

"Have you ever seen him before?"

The Chinese girl shook her head and shouldered her backpack. "Nope. Cherry just told me a little about him – like that he was a businessman, and that he didn't have a left thumb." She blinked as a look of shocked amazement began to spread across Erin's face. "Why? Do YOU know the guy?"

Erin shook her head. It had to be a coincidence. "Probably not – it's just that this guys sounds a little like the man I've been dating lately."

That made Sue chuckle brightly. "Imagine! Erin and Cherry dating the same guy…"

The thought actually made Erin half sick to her stomach. "That isn't funny, Sue…"

The Chinese girl was instantly contrite. "I didn't mean anything by it, Erin. I was just kidding around…"

"Call me when Cherry comes home, will ya?"

"I'll even start to chew her out for you – but leave you a few tender morsels to chew on yourself." Sue put her hand on Erin's shoulder. "You OK?"

Erin boosted her backpack a little higher on her shoulder. "I'll be OK," she assured her friend. She turned and walked back in the direction of the library – after all, she'd just been taking a break from trying to get her paper into some semblance of order and completion.

Cherry hadn't been seeing Lyle too, had she? She tried to remember the last time she'd seen her friend – it had been the day that Lyle had asked her to spend the day with him. Had he looked in Cherry's direction?

Face it, there weren't that many businessmen from out of state with a missing left thumb. Erin didn't like the possibilities that presented themselves as the result of that thought, and she began to walk faster through the library lobby and toward the stairs that led to the stacks she needed to be near. She had to get this paper done – and she'd worry about Cherry and Lyle later.

If she could keep her mind disciplined, that is…

oOoOo

"Are you sure this is the right place?" Lou asked Jarod hesitantly, staring across the street at the well-manicured lawn of the suburban tract house. Somehow it just seemed a little incongruous that one of the best free-lance assassins would live such an ordinary and nondescript life in the middle of mainstream America.

"That's what the property tax records indicate – that this is George Stoller's home base." Jarod eyed the windows of the house carefully. The property had been listed solely in George Stoller's name – there was no indication of a wife or other relative that shared the residence with him – but the house didn't look abandoned at all.

"What do you intend to do?" Lou asked next.

Jarod shrugged. "We could go up to the front door and knock, as if we were simple investigators looking into connections between Stoller and Hendricks," he replied with a wicked smile. "Sometimes the truth can be a comforting shield."

"Shit, boss…" Lou gaped when he saw that Jarod fully intended to act on the straight-forward and open plan he'd enumerated. "You weren't kidding?"

"If there's someone at home," Jarod explained patiently, "it will give us reason to be knocking. If there's NOT anybody at home, THEN we'll start thinking of alternatives."

"Like breaking in?"

Jarod didn't reply, but crossed the street and walked with confidence up the sidewalk to the front door. He waited only a few moments for his assistant to join him before pushing the button for the doorbell. He heard the chime in the depths of the house and waited for a long moment before pushing the bell again.

"Looks like nobody's here," Lou said hopefully.

Jarod gave him a quick glance and then lifted his knuckles to knock rather loudly on the door itself. He waited for another long moment before gesturing for Lou to follow him around the corner of the house, stopping at the front window to see if there was a break in the curtains through which he could peek – with no success. The gate to the back yard wasn't locked, and Jarod pushed it open so that he and Lou could slip through.

The back yard was just as manicured and well-maintained as the front yard had been. A bricked-in barbecue sat on the edge of the brick patio that was right next to arcadia doors of the house. Beyond the patio was a lawn that in summer must have been a beautiful green and tall trees that probably had rained leaves on the patio the month before. Jarod and Lou were able to look into the back of the house through the arcadia door that had been left with the curtains evidently open.

What they could see was clean, but with no visible signs of recent life within. After walking the entire perimeter of the house, checking the condition of the other windows carefully, Jarod pulled a set of picks from his pocket and went to work on the arcadia door. "Wait a minute!" Lou cautioned with a hand on his boss' forearm. "What if he has a security system?"

Jarod looked and shook his head. "He doesn't have the wiring for it," he pointed out. "There was no keypad at either the front door or here to disarm any security system." The lock of the arcadia door clicked, indicating that Jarod had unlocked it. "C'mon."

"What are we looking for?" Lou asked quietly, as if still unsure that they weren't going to be walking in on some wife or child present in the house.

"We'll know it when we find it," Jarod stated absently, moving to what looked like a well-used desk, complete with papers that turned out to be the stubs from Stoller's bills.

Lou wandered into the hallway to check out the bedrooms while Jarod, hands already wearing latex gloves, sorted quickly through the papers on the desk and then began to open the drawers one by one. A manila envelope that was on the drawer bottom beneath the hanging folders caught his attention, and he pulled it out and opened it to read what it contained. "Lou!"

"Yeah?" The assistant security man was quickly back in the back of the house. "I didn't see…"

"I think I've found what we need," Jarod announced and held up a piece of typing paper for Lou to read.

"Is that Blair's signature?" Lou gasped after a long moment.

"Yeah." Jarod's voice sounded a very ugly combination of grim and satisfied. "We finally got him – and Hendricks to boot."

oOoOo

"This is Base to Air Six. Anything? Over."

Lieutenant Baker glanced very briefly over to his co-pilot, Lieutenant Walker, before returning his scrutiny to the blanket of trees below that now had a heavy dusting of winter snow on their upper branches.. "Chris, you see anything yet?"

"Nothing," Christopher Walker replied. It had been a long morning – this section of the western Wasatch Mountains was virtually featureless except for the rough idea of the terrain beneath the tops of the pine trees. "Are we ready to move on to the next sector?"

"Yeah, there's nothing here," Baker agreed. "Air Six to Base – we're coming up empty here in sector C-5, requesting permission to move on to the next sector. Over."

There was a brief pause before the calm voice of the dispatcher came back over the headsets. "Roger that, Air Six. Permission granted to move along to sector C-6. Over."

"Hey, Tony…"

"What?"

"What's that, do you think?" Walker pointed.

Baker craned his neck and even tipped the plane so that he could get a better look. "I'm not sure…" he frowned and banked the plane to come around for a second pass. "That's an awful lot of broken trees…" he commented. "But it doesn't look like…"

"There!" Walker's finger moved to indicate where a glint of metal was shining up through the trees. "Is that a fuselage?"

Baker keyed his microphone. "Air Six to Base. We have a possible sighting, sector C-5, north-west corner. Over."

"Roger that, Air Six," the dispatch replied, trying unsuccessfully to keep the excitement out of her voice. "Any sign of survivors? Over."

"We aren't able to make out clear features, Base – but from what we can see from here, there's nothing… Sorry about that, Base. Over."

"Roger that, Air Six. Command is sending up choppers your way with Search and Rescue teams. Continue to monitor the area until they arrive. Over."

"Roger, Base. Will maintain fly-over until rescue choppers get here. Over."


	11. Fire and Ice

Chapter Eleven – Fire and Ice

"Do you hear that?" Bennings pointed upwards. "Listen!"

Over the sound of the wind still making the pine trees in the area moan and rustle, there was a low, mechanical hum – the sound of engines.

"They've found us!" Natalie burst out, unable to hold in her excitement. "We're saved!"

"They may be looking for us, but that doesn't mean that they've seen us," Sydney remarked dryly. "We've had a day or so of snowfall to hide whatever signs of a crash might be visible from the air…"

"There are a lot of broken trees in the area, doc," Bennings retorted, his spirits soaring in much the same way Natalie's had. "All we gotta do is let them know we're here…"

"And just how do you suggest we do that?" Sydney snapped. "Stand out in the middle of the snow in the debris field waving our arms like lunatics?"

"It's better than sitting tight in here and maybe not catching their attention," Natalie snapped back. "Everybody up and out NOW – we need to let them know…"

"We have sick and injured people here," Sydney reasoned, shaking his head and immediately wishing he hadn't. His headache, that had been flaring with gut-wrenching nausea and then receding to a dull pounding behind his eyes on and off since the crash, was back with all its fury. "And some of the rest of us aren't in the best shape either…"

"George and Parker I can understand. But you? Get moving!" Bennings reached down and hauled up on Sydney's left arm, and the old psychiatrist couldn't help the cry of pain that burst from his lips as he felt something in his back give way.

"Leave him alone!" Miss Parker burst out, alarmed at the way what little color Sydney's face had had simply drained away and he sagged in Benning's hold. "Can't you see that he's hurt too?"

Bennings stared. "I…" He'd never seen another person fade quite as quickly as the European gentleman was doing – and he knew that there was no way to fake such a thing. "I didn't know…"

"Look - if you want to go outside and try to signal the plane, then go ahead and do it! Nobody's stopping you," she hissed at the executive as she struggled to sit up, put her feet down properly and reach out to her old friend to help him sit back down next to her and lean if he needed to. "Sydney… God, Syd, are you OK?"

Sydney shook his head weakly. Where his left hand had been tingling and experiencing numbness off an on, now there was no sensation – and no muscle control – of the entire arm. What was more – now there was a stabbing pain between his shoulder blades. He could hardly hold his head up.

Miss Parker had very little energy – her tangle with the flu had made it impossible for her to even consider holding down any food, so she hadn't eaten since the meal on the plane before the crash. But what little energy she still had lit a fire in her eyes that she turned full-blast on Bennings. "I swear to God, if you've hurt him worse than he was before, and we get rescued, I'm gonna make it my business…"

"Parker," Sydney's right hand caught at her left. "Let it go – he didn't know…"

Bennings looked back and forth between the opening to the outside and the man who was evidently injured worse than anybody could have guessed, and then made his move to go outdoors, counting as he walked by the heads of those who evidently preferred to stay inside. Sydney had been so stoic, without complaint helping anybody who'd been hurt all this time; it was hard to think that he'd done so while bearing up under his own injuries. Bennings stopped halfway out to turn and count heads once more. "Wait a minute - where's the kid?"

Miss Parker's head swiveled sharply to look first at him, around their somewhat comfortable shelter, and then at Natalie, who threw her good hand up. "I… She was with me just a while ago… I mean…"

Miss Parker sighed. "Go out and see if she's trying to wave down the plane," she directed with a note of frustration in her voice. "Can't you people think for yourselves?"

"Parker…" This time Sydney's voice was mildly chiding. "Nobody's exactly thinking clearly right now…"

Bennings didn't wait, but grabbed Natalie's hand and dragged her along with him. "You were supposed to keep an eye on her," he scolded the stewardess crossly.

The two looked all around once they got past their barriers, but there wasn't a sign of the little girl at all. "Where would she have gotten to?" Natalie wondered aloud.

"Oh God!" Benning's stomach turned. He'd caught sight of fresh footprints, small ones, in the snow. "I wonder where the hell she thinks she's going." He took a couple of strides following the trail left behind leading in the direction of the larger debris field, then turned when he didn't hear Natalie slogging along behind him. "Come on!"

Natalie only stood there and shook her head. "I don't… I can't…" She looked up as the sound of the engine grew nearer and began waving her good arm madly. "We're down here!" she screamed at the top of her lungs. "Down HERE!"

Bennings sighed and began to walk, sticking strictly to the path broken by the little girl. Where was it that he'd found the child again? Could he find that bank of seats again – and would the girl be there? He knew this was quite possibly the worst time for them to separate into smaller groups, but there wasn't any alternative.

"Emily?" he called across the field of the dead. "Where are you, sweetheart? You need to come back now…"

oOoOo

Sam eased the nose of the car down the drive toward the Ranger's compound where the Search and Rescue units were assembling. Ethan pointed to another dark sedan that had been parked off to the side. "They're already here," he said softly.

"We knew we'd catch up to them sooner or later," Sam told his companion with a cautioning tone. "Whether or not things are going to get real ugly real fast will depend on whether or not they're on the lookout for us – or anybody else wanting to get in on the Search and Rescue party."

"So what do we do now?" Ethan cast his gaze now to the men who were standing in a clump near the front porch of what looked like the main building, milling about and talking to each other excitedly. "It looks as if they've had news."

Sam killed the engine and opened his door. "We aren't going to find out by sitting here where it's safe," he commented and climbed out. He'd already picked out the men employed by the Salt Lake City Centre – they stood out like horse turds on hills, as far as he was concerned. Each wore an identical black parka and dark trousers, and galoshes that looked more suited to city use than back country hiking. "Let's just keep on the other side of the mob from those two," he caught at Ethan's arm and pointed.

Ethan nodded and waited for Sam to lead the way. More or less together, the two men joined the group and listened to the chatter for a moment.

"…they sent in choppers to check it out…"

"…no sign of any life…

Sam turned to look at Ethan, who shook his head. "I know she's alive – I swear it," he insisted too softly to be heard by anybody else.

"I hope for our sake you're right," Sam replied in an equally soft tone. Then he grabbed Ethan's upper arm. "Wait a minute – looks like we're going to get an update."

"Gather round, people – I don't want to say this but once," the man in the Sheriff's coat spoke into a bullhorn, easily getting the attention of all there with just those few words. He waited until the murmuring had died down and all were facing him expectantly. "We just got word back from the choppers – there's at least one survivor up on that mountain – but the terrain up there on that particular slope is just too forested for the choppers to land close and do an on-site recon. So that means we're on tap – and we'll be walking in. The NTSA has been notified – after the emergency rescue effort, we'll be assisting them in their job."

There was a murmur and rustle of energy that filtered through the men while the Sheriff held his hand up. "Now, I know some of you have family members who were on that flight, and you want to head straight up the mountain to see whether your loved one is still alive – but we're not going to have the luxury of taking along sightseers. Considering that preliminary reports were of no survivors at all, it's probably going to be pretty ugly up there. We're going to be looking for anyone with first aid and/or medical experience and fairly strong stomachs. All who think they qualify can come up to the porch here and submit your name. The choppers will be back in about ten minutes to transport the rescue teams in as far as they can get them – so we want the teams ready by then. That's it…"

Sam's hand landed hard on Ethan's shoulder. "Do you have any medical experience?"

The young man shook his head. "Not officially. Mr. Raines had me do lots of stuff before I got away, though - I've SIMmed and Pretended…"

"Something tells me they aren't exactly checking resumes on this one," Sam told him. "I served with a med-evac unit in Desert Storm – you can claim to have dropped out of med school a year ago."

"What are you going to do if the other sweepers…" Ethan began, his eyes wide.

"Let me worry about them. We know they're here, and they don't know we're here – I've been watching them, and they HAVEN'T been acting like they're on the lookout for anybody at this point. That gives us an advantage." Sam patted the young man on the shoulder once more and then stepped forward. He mounted the steps to the porch, ignoring the other sweepers and praying that they hadn't had a picture of him to work from, and walked up to the desk. "I was with a medical unit in Desert Storm," he announced tersely.

"You're hired," the sheriff declared with an open grin and handed Sam papers. "Fill these out quickly. Next?"

"Dropped out of med school last year."

"You're hired. Here – fill these out ASAP. Next?"

Both Sam and Ethan picked up one of the spare pens on the sheriff's desk and moved to where they could brace the papers against the wall to fill them out. By the time the whump-whump of the helicopter blades was starting to fill the sky, both had handed the papers back and were pointed over to a smaller group of men standing and waiting by the helo-pads.

With a grin Sam noted that only one of the other sweepers had managed to get onto the rescue teams – that more than evened the odds for them. He was even more relieved when the smaller group of men was divided into two – and the other sweeper ended up on his team along with Ethan. Sam walked with his group toward the huge helicopter, deliberately not looking at the sweeper so as to call any attention to himself. He climbed into the helicopter slightly ahead of the other sweeper and quickly found his seat. At least now he'd find out whether Ethan's claim about Miss Parker's condition was wishful thinking, or genuine.

oOoOo

Blake Hendricks glanced up as his office door swung open to allow Jarod entry. "Jarod. Can you make this quick? I have a meeting in just a little over fifteen minutes…"

"I don't think so," Jarod replied in a tight voice.

Hendricks' head jerked up to look at his Chief of Security and suddenly noticed that he hadn't come to the office alone. Behind him stood a man he'd never seen before. "Who's this – and what's this all about?"

"Carl trusted you," Jarod accused, ignoring Hendricks' questions entirely, "and you turned around and betrayed that trust…"

"Jarod," Hendricks' eyes were wide, "I don't know what you're talking about." His right hand slipped behind the desk.

Almost before he knew what was happening, the man behind Jarod had a gun out and pointed in his face. "Bring that hand back up on the desk, nice and slow," he instructed in a no-nonsense tone that told Hendricks that failure to comply could have serious repercussions.

Jarod merely nodded in confirmation when the hand returned to the desktop with a gun clasped in it. "Drop it!" the unnamed man demanded harshly, and Hendricks carefully dropped the gun from two fingers to clatter to the desktop.

"We got you, you son of a bitch," Jarod hissed, stepping forward to snare the handgun away before Hendricks could change his mind. He handed the weapon to his still unknown companion, who pocketed the weapon and immediately pulled from that same jacket pocket a wallet that he flipped open to show that it contained a badge.

"Detective Franks, Philadelphia Police, and you're under arrest for conspiracy to commit murder and solicitation to commit murder for hire."

As Hendricks' mouth dropped open, Jarod bent forward with eyes narrowed. "And as of ten minutes ago, when I got off the phone with the Foundation Trustees, you're fired."

There was a long moment in which Hendricks and Jarod stayed with their gazes locked in silent contest, and then Hendricks gave a quick nod. "Damned do-gooders," he muttered to himself as Detective Franks came around to behind the desk with his handcuffs at the ready.

Jarod bit his tongue and said nothing as Franks hauled Hendricks up by the back of his shirt and pulled first one arm and then the other behind him to snap on the handcuffs. Hendricks shot Jarod a sharp look. "I suppose you're going to be taking over for me," he stated, his words not a question. "You always were Carl's number three guy."

"That's right," Jarod replied with great satisfaction. "And my first order of business is to get my ass over to Salt Lake City, in case Carl actually managed to survive that plane crash."

"You aren't worried that Blair won't make a move against you while you're away from the Big Chair?" Hendricks sneered.

"Joseph Blair is being arrested as we speak," Detective Franks announced, giving Hendricks' arm a yank to get him moving in the direction of the door. "His charges are quite similar to yours, if it makes you feel any better."

"Are you going to need me to make any additional statements, Detective?" Jarod asked as the pair moved past him.

"I have your cell phone number if I need to get in contact with you," Franks replied. "I'm assuming you'll be out of state for a day or two – but it will take a while to get this guy arraigned. Hopefully by then, you'll know whether or not your boss man made it – and will be back."

"I'll keep you informed as to my itinerary," Jarod promised. "And thanks for the assist. I think having you here made it so that I didn't give in to the temptation to tear him apart at the seams."

Hendricks snorted derisively. "You haven't got the balls for that," he announced with certainty. "You're nothing but morally stuck up mush – just like Carl."

Jarod's eyes narrowed again. "My friend, you never knew me," he replied simply with as neutral a tone as he could manage. He looked over at Franks. "Get him out of here."

"With pleasure," Franks replied and commandeered an elbow to steer the man's steps.

The moment the office was empty of anyone but him, Jarod let go a huge sigh and then moved to behind the desk. He sat down where Hendricks had been only moments before and dialed an extension number. "Sandy?"

"Yeah? Did you nail his sorry ass?"

Jarod gave a dark chuckle. "You could say that. Listen, I need a seat on a flight to  
Salt Lake City as of yesterday. You up to working your magic for me again?"

"What's my enticement?"

Jarod's jaw dropped for a moment. "How does getting the week after the Chairman's position is settled once and for all as a vacation sound to you?"

Sandy's laugh was like sunlight on water. "You'll have your seat before you can get back here to pack your briefcase. Going after Carl?"

"I gotta know," Jarod explained, unwilling to share that he had more than just the one reason to be heading west. "I gotta be there. Just get me there as quickly as you can."

"So hang up so I can call the airline already," she chided him with a snort of mischief.

Jarod laughed aloud at that and hung up on her obediently. His laughter quickly died, however. The time had come when he was free to act on his urges. He had a friend up on that mountainside – no, he had TWO friends and a man he still considered like a father up on that mountainside. He needed to BE there. NOW.

Sam and Ethan would keep any harm from coming to either Parker or Sydney until he could get there – if they were alive. And Carl…

They all HAD to be alive. They just HAD to be…

oOoOo

"Well?" Lyle asked as Phil came through the frosted glass doors to the Tower office and carefully shut them behind him.

"There's good news and bad news," Phil told him after waiting to take his seat in front of the massive desk. He'd never been so glad to see the smooth and youthful face of his boss in his life – and to be able to move out from behind the incredible responsibility that desk represented.

"Give me the good news first," Lyle demanded. "I'm still celebrating."

"OK… I have a team of Salt Lake City's best cleaners on their way to 'help' out with the crash," Phil announced, knowing exactly what his boss wanted of him. "Their orders are to make sure that Miss Parker and Sydney don't survive the crash."

"How soon will we know anything?"

Phil shrugged. "The last I heard anything on the news, the search planes were just leaving Salt Lake City to start looking for them again."

Lyle heaved a silent sigh. Patience, he counseled himself sternly. He'd waited all these years to have the Centre in the palm of his hand, he could wait until there was no longer any threat to his ascendancy from either his twin or the old psychiatrist. "All right," he said eventually. "What about the rest of it? Angelo?"

"We THINK we know what section of the ventilation system he's in, but we haven't actually caught him yet…" Phil looked somewhat uncomfortable.

"For God's sake, just fill the ducts with sleeping gas and neutralize the son of a bitch so that when you go in after him, he's dreaming of sugar plums!" Lyle could barely restrain his frustration. That wacko cretin had been leading the Centre on a merry chase for years – it was time to put a stop to it.

"We can't just fill the ducts with sleeping gas!" Phil gasped. "We'd put the whole complex to sleep in the bargain."

Lyle frowned. "Ever heard of a gas mask? Ever thought of handing them out to the employees and THEN gassing the ductworks?"

Phil flinched. He hadn't thought of that – and was a little amazed that Lyle would think of going to such great lengths for yet another lab experiment that had gotten its noodle scrambled so long ago, according to the stories.

"Angelo is the bad news?" Lyle dared to look hopeful.

"You wish," Phil remarked caustically. "There has been a lot of flack as the result of the car bombing that took out old man Raines. The FBI have been hounding this office looking for you – I'm surprised they didn't nail you in the parking structure on your way in."

Lyle just shook his head. "What's their problem?"

Phil shook his head. "No idea whatsoever. All I know is that this Agent Stein was in here yesterday telling me that if you didn't show today and make yourself available for interview, I'd be arrested for obstruction of justice."

Lyle gazed into the eyes of his personal sweeper. "Are they acting like they have anything on me?" he asked, a little nonplussed.

"They've got something cooking on a front burner that involves you, I'd wager," Phil answered honestly.

"Shit." Lyle spat. This was the last thing he needed. He'd thought he could just check in, rattle a few cages, make an appearance in front of the Triumvirate representative, make sure his lackey had that report Mr. Abé had demanded, and then go home to his ritual meal. He'd delayed THAT about as long as he cared to. He cradled his forehead between his right thumb and forefinger for a long moment of silence. "Is that everything? What about the rest of my dear sister's team?"

Phil's face tightened slightly. "They eluded all the sweepers I sent after them, Mr. Lyle."

"What?!"

"You have to remember, Sam is one of the best of the best of us," the sweeper said quickly, not liking the look of complete frustration and the beginnings of a genuine anger on his boss' face. "He knows all the tricks in the book that sweepers use – hell, he probably helped write a good share of them, working for Miss Parker all this time…"

"I don't need excuses, damn it!" Lyle exploded. "I didn't ask you to catch Jarod in two days – just a computer nerd and a sweeper, for God's sake!"

"They're damned smart people," Phil retorted, stung. "We didn't finally locate them on this end until they were boarding a plane heading west. I can't be held responsible if the men in Salt Lake City let them slip on that end…"

Lyle's narrowed eyes told a far different story for a brief instant, and then Lyle was up and pacing. "If Sam and Broots know about Parker and Sydney, and made it to Salt Lake City, you can bet your bottom dollar that they're gonna make a run at trying to be there to help them out – if they survived." Lyle's stomach turned. "They could blow the whole thing, if they get in the way of the cleaners we have up there…"

"You want me to recall the cleaners?" Phil asked calmly. His losing his cool would accomplish nothing beneficial at the moment.

"No," Lyle replied after a moment of thought spent staring out at the magnificent view afforded the Chairman's office. "What I'd really rather have happen is that the cleaners you sent along had pictures of Sam and Broots as well – and orders to take them out as quietly and permanently as possible too. But I suppose it's too late for that now." He massaged his forehead again. "Get busy and get Angelo into a box he can't climb out of – you can at least get THAT right, now, can't you?"

Phil bit his tongue. Maybe being in the power elite and at the top end of the Centre food chain had it's down sides – besides those he'd already experienced sitting behind Mr. Lyle's desk. "Yes, sir," he answered as calmly as he could, rose from his seat and walked briskly out of the office.

Lyle sighed and leaned against the tempered glass of the huge window. Was this part of what had made old man Raines into such a blithering idiot, he wondered, the idiocy of others being a just plain nuisance? He belatedly thought of how many times over the past years Mr. Parker and then Mr. Raines after him had had to sit and listen to one report after another about the inability of this person or that to reacquire Jarod – his own reports included. Thinking on it now, he could see where explosions of fury – not to mention repeated applications of t-board grillings – had been considered a reasonable response.

This was NOT the way he'd hoped to spend his first REAL day as Top Dog at the Centre. After all, there was still the small matter of a choice piece of meat sitting in his fridge at home awaiting his careful attention and creative culinary genius.

He pushed away from the window and plopped himself down into the magnificently comfortable chair and reached for the phone. "Sung-Li? Get me Phil Dryer in Accounting and have him bring whatever draft of the report I asked him to write with him. Immediately." His thumb and forefinger massaged his temples. "And bring in some aspirin and a fresh cup of coffee."

oOoOo

"You wanted to see us, doc?" Detective Bill Lowe inquired as he and his partner pushed through the swinging doors to the Morgue.

"We've got an ID on your vic," the ME announced triumphantly. "Cherry Fu, age 22, U of M student. Forensics team found her wallet and ID tossed in the dumpster with her – no latent prints, however." The green-garbed man moved around the examination table and pointed. "Cause of death was strangulation – and we have the imprint of two hands at the neck, left hand missing a thumb."

"So we're looking for a guy missing a thumb as the killer, right?" Bridges asked, his pen poised over his notebook.

"Killer and rapist," the ME nodded. "I did a rape kit – your guy wore protection. But from the amount of damage, I'd say he made a point of hurting her pretty badly – probably more than once."

"What about the little cuts?" Lowe asked, his eyes transfixed by the numerous silent little mouths that gaped all across the still young woman's bosom and belly.

"That was nothing but torture," the ME answered in disgust, "although taken together and given time, would have caused weakness from blood loss." He looked up and gave both detectives a sharp look. "You guys need to nail this bastard, before he does this again!"

"Any signs of hesitation?" Lowe asked suddenly.

The ME shook his head. "Nope, not a one. This guy knew exactly what he was doing."

"Maybe he's done it before." The words slipped from Bridges' lips before he could call them back.

Lowe merely nodded. "That's what I'm thinking." He looked over at the ME and gave another nod. "Thanks, doc."

"We need to put the particulars of this out on the wires, don't we?" Bridges commented as he kept pace with his partner.

"I have a funny feeling I've read about something similar to this a while back," Lowe mused aloud. "I can't remember from where, and I can't remember how long ago, but there's just something about this that seems a little too familiar."

"That's all we need," Bridges growled darkly, "a serial killer."

oOoOo

Broots was bored and frustrated.

He'd known he couldn't go with Sam and Ethan – someone needed to stay behind with Debbie – but that didn't change the fact that he'd wanted to go very badly. After all, it was Miss Parker up on that mountainside, and if Ethan were right, she was alive and hurt and in growing danger. Sydney was there too – at least she had someone there for her…

Debbie was quiet, watching an old movie on television. He'd tried to sit and watch it with her, but it was one of those sophomoric comedies with very little plot and fairly lousy acting – just the kind of movie that he detested. So he'd wandered over to his laptop and signed into the Centre mainframe, looking for something without known exactly what or why. Amazingly, his access and clearance had not been compromised – and a few minutes of active testing told him that there was no surveillance on his account or keystroke trackers taking down what he did while logged in. He smiled to himself. So much of what the Centre was about was on this mainframe – and the technophobia that both Raines and Lyle had exhibited in the past meant that neither had fully appreciated the depth to which the "brains" of the Centre could be compromised.

*Hey there, Baldy.* popped up the Centre's own version of Instant Messenger. The username was a buddy of his in Computer Technologies – a geek with a username of Rabbit, because of his oversized ears and front teeth.

*Hey there yourself, Rabbit* Broots typed back. *What's up at the salt mine?*

*Word at the water cooler is that they're looking for you, man,* his friend sent back almost immediately. *What you do, rob the place?*

*Nah - I think Lyle's just got it in for me on general principles,* Broots replied. *Anything interesting come along since I've been out with the flu?*

*Just the FBI snooping all over the place,* Rabbit answered. *They're asking a lot of questions and flashing a picture around of the guy they THINK was the one who did in Nosferatu.*

Broots smirked briefly – he'd heard Miss Parker call Mr. Raines 'Nosferatu' a while back and had mentioned it to one of his coworkers, only to find out about a week later that the nickname had caught on. He'd been lucky – Raines had eventually found out about the nickname and had vowed to personally 'take care of' whoever had started it, but Broots' colleague had kept his mouth shut. *They think Lyle had something to do with that, eh?*

*Could be.* There was a pause. *Just got a quick flash from Doug down in the lobby – the feds are back, and in force this time.*

*Isn't Lyle around?*

*He's been a no-show for the past couple – but showed up this morning still sporting the shiner he got a few days ago – the day you went home sick, as a matter of fact.*

*I remember hearing about that one,* Broots replied. *I'll let you get back to what you were doing…*

*I finished coding the patch to the audio-video communications program – I was just sitting here watching the on-line users and playing solitaire.*

Broots shook his head. Rabbit's cubby was located at the far end of the Computer Technologies computer lab, where few ventured most of the time. Rabbit's skill at coding had kept him in that far, undisturbed corner earning top dollar as an ace programmer despite his tendency to get bored easily and play computer games when trying to think through a particular bug fix. *You know, man, if Lyle's in charge, he may not appreciate your way of doing things.*

*As if Mr. Lyle ever shows up down here in the first place, Baldy,* Rabbit replied, and Broots could almost hear the disdain in his voice. *You see more of him than I do, working for the Ice Queen.*

Mention of Miss Parker shattered Broots' smile. *Yeah, well, I gotta go.*

*See you when you get back, man.*

Broots closed out the IM program entirely, so that he could browse the mainframe without being disturbed again. At least now he knew what he was looking for – talking with Rabbit had crystallized his thinking: he needed to see anything new, created within the last twenty-four hours, that mentioned his name, Sam's Sydney's or Miss Parker's. Staying three steps ahead of the Centre would take diligence and patience – and was the one sure way in which he could help Miss Parker from the anonymous and relative safety of a motel room.

oOoOo

Bennings tripped on something that the snow had obscured with feet that were starting to get numb. Small wonder Sydney had been less than anxious to go outside – twelve inches of snow tended to get inside shoes and freeze toes far too quickly. He wouldn't be able to be out here for long looking for the lost girl without risking frostbite.

The trail took a turn around a tall pine tree that had lost many of its lower branches to the destructive power of the falling plane, and he gave a deep sigh of relief and a shudder. Emily had indeed remembered where her mother was still strapped into her seat. The little girl had climbed into the seat with the corpse and was trying to brush the deep snow from the frozen head and shoulders and lap.

Bennings walked up to the paired seats and called down gently, "Emily…"

"If they're coming to rescue us, I have to wake up Mommy," she explained without looking away from her self-assigned task. "Mommy…" She pushed at the shoulder of the corpse, and then pushed harder. "Mommy, wake up!"

"Sweetie," Bennings bent down to her, much the way he had when he'd originally found her, "your Mommy's gone. She's in heaven now."

"No!" the child insisted and pushed harder on the corpse. "Mommy! Wake up! It's time to go now!" Her voice had a touch of panic in it now. "Come on, Mommy…"

"Emily," the executive had never felt quite so helpless, "it's too cold for you to be out here for long. Don't you think that if your Mommy was OK, she'd want you inside, where it's warm?"

"But…" Tearful blue eyes peered up into his imploringly. "But I'm OK… Why…"

Bennings shook his head sadly. The absolute last thing he wanted to do was destroy a child's hopes – but it was a question of survival. "Your Mommy's all stiff and cold, isn't she?"

Emily looked back at the still form of her mother. The face she loved so much was a strange shade of grey-blue. She reached out a tentative finger and touched her mother's cheek – and found it indeed hard and cold. She looked back up into the understanding face of the tall man with the loud voice. "She's dead?"

"Yes." There was no way to soften the blow – not here, and not now. "She can't take care of you anymore. You need to come with me now."

A single tear began to make its way down a pale cheek. "It's my fault…"

"No it isn't!" Bennings said sharply and pulled the little girl from the seat to stand in front of him. "None of this is your fault. Bad things happen sometimes – even to people we love." He grasped her firmly under the arms and lifted her. "When the people come to rescue us, they will take us somewhere safe and warm first – and then later on, when we're taken care of, they'll be back for your mommy and all the others."

Emily wrapped her arms around Bennings' neck tightly and laid her head on his shoulder, finally shivering with the cold of little feet too poorly protected against the snow and too long out in the cold as well as the shock of finally realizing her loss. "What am I going to do now?" she whimpered. "Daddy doesn't want us – that's why we were going back home…"

"We'll worry about that later, after the rescuers get us off this mountain," Bennings assured her, beginning to backtrack his steps. "Listen." He stopped walking, and the two of them together listened as a new, rhythmical thumping could be heard in the distance. "They'll be here soon. Let's go get warm, shall we?"

Emily nodded slowly and sniffled, then sniffled again.

The walk back to the first class cabin was slow and careful – Bennings didn't want to trip or fall over some piece of hidden debris that he'd just managed to avoid on the trek out. By the time he got to the clearing near the protected end of the cabin, he could see that Natalie's footsteps lead back into the warmth of the cabin too. He twisted and turned as he moved past the leaning sheets of metal.

"You stay with Natalie now," he directed as he handed the girl back to the stewardess, who had her shoes and socks off and nearly had her feet in the hearth. Natalie wrapped the blanket back around Emily's shoulders and began removing her shoes. Bennings moved forward until he could look down at Miss Parker sitting next to and supporting Sydney, who was leaning into her left shoulder. Neither of them had moved an inch from the position they'd been in when he'd left. "How is he?"

Grey eyes flashed. "He's not saying much anymore," she replied in a worried tone and then shivered. "He can't move his left arm anymore."

Bennings ran his hand down his face. "God, I'm sorry," he said, knowing the words to be totally inadequate. "I didn't mean…"

"None of us knew – even I didn't know how badly he was hurt besides his head," Miss Parker said tersely and then shivered again. "Listen - can you put that log on the fire? It's getting cold in here again."

Bennings frowned at her a little, even as he bent to grab up another log to add to the glowing pile in the center of the hearth. "Not really," he stated and turned to Natalie. "Are you cold?" When she shook her head, and even George from his spot on the floor shook his head, he turned back to her. "It must be from your injuries."

That thought had occurred to her – she just didn't want to think through the implications. "Are you going to go outside and signal the plane?" she inquired with a sharp glare.

He shook his head. "I forgot about the snow – which is plenty deep out there now. I don't need to be tempting frostbite at this late stage of the game. When the rescuers get here, they'll find us whether or not I stand out there and direct traffic." He ran his fingers through his more than ample shock of sandy hair. "I just hate to sit here like a lump on a log…"

Miss Parker shivered again, noting that she was starting to get sharp, shooting pains in her injured shoulder now that were making it difficult to concentrate on conversation. "Yeah," she agreed as she closed her eyes miserably and shivered yet again. "They'll find us."

And not a moment too soon, as far as she was concerned.

oOoOo

"Hey Erin!" Veronica tapped her workmate on the shoulder as she stood at the espresso machine. "There's a couple of guys over there are looking for you – they say they're cops."

"Looking for me?" Erin frowned, then pointed at what she was doing. "You got this?"

"Yeah – you go ahead." Veronica watched as Erin grabbed a hand towel and dried her hands before approaching the two men.

"I'm Erin Patterson," she announced as she drew near. "They said you're looking for me?"

The taller man pulled a badge from his jacket pocket. "I'm Detective Stan Bridges, and this is my partner, Bill Lowe." Lowe had his badge out too. "We're here to ask you a few questions about Cherry Fu."

"Did Sue report her missing already?" Erin was shocked – Sue had said she was going to wait until morning…

"Uh…" The two detectives looked at each other. "Not exactly – but we've already spoken to her roommate. She said that you saw her a couple of days ago."

"Yeah…" Erin eyed the two men carefully. "What's going on here?"

The older detective looked at her sympathetically. "Cherry Fu was murdered sometime yesterday. As you are one of the last few people to see her alive, we thought we'd see if you had any information as to what her plans were…" He took in her reaction. "Miss…"

Erin reeled at the idea that Cherry wasn't just out on a lark avoiding her, but dead on a slab in the morgue. She blinked for a moment, then remembered that it had been Sue that had told her about the man Cherry had been getting ready to go see. "Have you spoken to her roommate yet?"

The detectives consulted their notebooks. "Sue Choi?" Lowe confirmed and then nodded. "She gave us some information - said he was a businessman from out of state, described him as tall, dark haired, blue eyed, missing a left thumb and sporting a black eye."

Erin felt her stomach twist. Sue hadn't mentioned THAT to her. It couldn't be Lyle, could it? How many out of state businessmen with missing left thumbs and a black eye could one reasonably expect to uncover in Baltimore on a given day. "How did she…"

"Raped and strangled," Bridges replied, watching the young woman's face carefully. "Sue also mentioned that she thought you acted like you knew this guy."

"I…" Erin was feeling downright queasy. Lyle had been late to THEIR date – had that been because he'd been busy killing Cherry and lost track of time? And then, last night, she'd…

"Miss? You OK?" Lowe put out a hand when Erin swayed slightly.

"God – it can't be…" she moaned.

"Do you know this guy?" Lowe asked with more determination.

"I…" Erin was trapped. Her suspicions were just too great to ignore – and the implications if they proved true was just too much to want to consider at the moment. Not at work, not with other people around. "He said his name was Mr. Lyle – although he used it as much as a given name as anything else. He works in Delaware, I think." She gazed into the detective's eyes desperately. "Don't tell him that I was the one who gave you his name – please. If this is just a monstrous coincidence, I'd still like to be able to see him…"

"You went out with this guy?" Bridges gaped. Less than an hour on the computer scanning databases of unsolved crimes had netted no less than three other women who had met much the same fate as Cherry Fu.

Erin nodded miserably. "Last night."

Both men were writing in their notebooks. "Any idea where we can find this Mr. Lyle?"

She shook her head. "He comes in here fairly often – that's where I met him…" It was then that a thought hit her, and it took her from feeling merely sickened to downright nauseated. It had been in here, right in front of her, that Lyle might have seen Cherry. She'd come in to compare research notes very quickly not long after he'd been there, just a few days ago.

Lowe had a business card out and handed it to her. "Listen - if you see or hear from this guy again, I want you to call me. My home phone number is written on the back. I don't care what time it is – if you see him again, call!"

Erin nodded numbly. She gazed past the detectives into the coffee deli shop. "I gotta get back to work," she muttered and left them without even so much as a goodbye.

It couldn't be true, she kept telling herself – but in her heart she knew it was. She'd slept with the man who only hours earlier had raped and then killed Cherry. She'd made it only halfway back to the espresso machine when she had to turn and make a mad dash for the women's restroom before she lost every last bite of her lunch.


	12. Race Against Time

Chapter Twelve – Race Against Time

Sam leaned his head back against the inside wall of the helicopter and tried not to think about how the movement of the helicopter was playing havoc with his concussion headache. He kept his eyes closed so that the visual information not matching the movement his inner ears were detecting didn't rile his nausea any worse than it already had. Beside him, he heard Ethan sigh softly and wondered very briefly if Miss Parker's half-brother were empathic at all.

There were eight men in this helicopter – another eight in the second chopper. Together, there would be sixteen men hiking down from above the tree line through the snow to the crash site. It would be a long, hard haul – the plane had come down on the western slopes of the Wasatch Mountains well into the thick pine forest. There was no clear or flat place near the site for choppers of this size to land.

Sam folded his arms and very inconspicuously checked that his gun was still securely in place near his left armpit. Hopefully he wouldn't have to use it – guns called attention to themselves and the men who carried them, especially in the silence of a wilderness – but he wasn't taking chances. He had no idea what kind of excuse he could concoct to justify the necessity of shooting a fellow rescuer – short of, perhaps, pointing out that the rescuer in question also had a gun and the pictures of two of the passengers on the plane, and verbal instructions to make sure they didn't survive. He'd probably end up spending the night in jail himself – but it would be worth it, if that meant Miss Parker and Sydney made it down off that mountain in one piece.

"Here we go," he heard the leader announce brusquely just before all of the chopper's movements ceased except the slight vibration from the powerful rotor motors. "Everybody out!"

Having climbed into the helicopter just ahead of the Centre sweeper, he had the ability to quietly signal Ethan to wait until their unknowing nemesis was already up and ready to disembark before they got to their feet. The air turbulence from the landing chopper had cleared away most of what looked to be nearly twelve inches of snow from the barren rock; and the moment the last of the rescuers were out of the vehicle and the stack of metal baskets for carrying any injured survivors was off-loaded, the rotors began spinning more powerfully again as the helicopter lifted itself away to make room for the other chopper.

Once all sixteen rescuers were gathered around Kevin Grossman, the search team leader, he began giving directions. "OK, people, the crash site is just below us – about seven hundred yards down the mountain. I want you to pair up, and each pair take charge of one of these rescue stokes. We'll head down the mountain in single file, after me. Ready?"

Ethan took hold of one end of a basket, while Sam took charge of the other. Each basket had a packet lashed to the bottom that included a thermal blanket and other emergency items. The rescue team formed up and began the slow walk down the mountainside, and Sam maneuvered their team until they were the last team in line. When Ethan would have complained, he turned and calmed the young man by saying, "This way, I can keep my eye on the other sweeper – just in case, you know?"

Ethan didn't reply, he simply nodded acceptance of Sam's thinking and followed Sam's lead as they took up their position at the end of the line, walking in a trail already well-blazed through the snow for them by those who had gone before. The snow was deep enough, the leader in front was in no hurry and taking no chances in his or any of the others' tripping or falling over something buried in the snow.

It was going to be a long hike.

oOoOo

Al Douglas felt the metal basket bumping against his backside rhythmically with every step he took, keeping a very careful three paces behind the man in front of him. This had been almost too easy – his experience in Vietnam years earlier as a corpsman as being enough to qualify him for entry into the rescue team hadn't been questioned in the least.

Still, he wondered just what it was that the Ice Queen herself had done to warrant the Tower issuing a termination order on her. In fact, he wondered that there had been no copy of that termination order presented to either him or Tom before their being sent on their way northward into the mountains – no code name of the issuer, nothing that resembled SOP at all. This entire set of orders from Blue Cove lately had reeked of impropriety – and perhaps, the orders to take care of Miss Parker and the old psychiatrist that had been her colleague for years now was part of an internal power struggle in the upper echelons as the result Raines' murder. It was entirely possible that following the order would land him in as much serious trouble as not following it would – and he wondered briefly if anybody had ever posed this kind of dilemma to those training sweepers. He knew damned well he'd never heard of anything like this during his first days at the Centre.

Al didn't often think of the days when the Centre recruiter had come to talk to him at the halfway house a week after his release from prison anymore. Making that decision to come, train and then work for the Centre had turned his life around in the most dramatic way – dramatic enough that remembering his past and the direction he'd been heading was no longer pleasant. Before then, he'd been a petty thief, a drunk and a drug addict, not so very good at committing burglaries to support his burgeoning drug habit as not to get caught at it – and getting desperate enough that mugging pedestrians would have been the next step on his slow slide into perdition. The Centre had found him recovering from a drunken stupor, taken him, brought him to Delaware, cleaned him up, stuck him in a gym with Miss Parker – who was at that time the head of Sweeper Training – and given him the skills that had served him well over the years. Miss Parker had been a tough but fair trainer, and he had no beef with her at all. In fact, he admired her – it was her tough, no-nonsense and yet intelligent posture that he'd always aspired to emulate himself first as a sweeper and then later as a cleaner.

He'd heard through the grapevine that was the ever-fluid contingent of sweepers and cleaners to cycle in and out of the various satellite bureaus he'd been assigned to later that first Miss Parker had been assigned to Corporate, to be the director of SIS for the entire organization. Several years later he heard that she'd been given the plum assignment of heading the retrieval team to hunt down the escaped Pretender, Jarod. More recent reports had been of the pressure put on the now-two retrieval teams, courtesy of Triumvirate pressure on those in the Tower to bring profitability back as a Centre asset.

Obviously, something must have happened just recently to change her position within the upper hierarchy after all of that. Still, one would have thought that being the daughter of the former Chairman would have held at least a few perks – the least of which being not thrown to a pack of cleaners.

And what would the old psychiatrist who had been Jarod's trainer have done to deserve liquidation? That kind of experience was valuable – one nurtured and cherished the one possessing it, one didn't casually toss it in a dumpster.

Al shook his head and focused his attention on the back of the man ahead of him. These were the kinds of questions he'd been trained NOT to have. The Centre had been very good to him these last fifteen, twenty years – it was the height of disloyalty to start trying to second-guess the purpose to anything the Tower decided. The Tower speaks, and those who exist below scramble to comply – that was the image that had been ground into him since very early on. Sweepers didn't think – they did as they were told.

It wouldn't do to start thinking for himself at this late date – no matter how things weren't adding up. That was the way his name would end up on a similar termination order. Nope. He wouldn't question. Someone in the Tower wanted Miss Parker and Doctor Green dead – by God, dead they'd be, if he had anything to do with it.

oOoOo

"Special Agent Stein of the FBI to see you, sir," Sung-Li's melodic and yet clipped voice told Lyle through the telephone receiver.

Lyle sighed. Phil had warned him – best get this over as quickly as possible. "Send him in, and hold all my calls until my meeting with Agent Stein is finished, please."

"Very good, sir." Lyle could hear her telling the FBI man to proceed as she put down her end of the receiver.

The plate glass doors pushed in, and a tall man with a flowing overcoat walked briskly into the office. "Mr. Lyle Parker?" he asked in an almost frustrated tone.

"Yes." Lyle rose and extended his hand across the desk. "I understand you've been very anxious to meet with me. My assistant…" he paused to point at Phil, who now stood at silent attention behind the desk at Lyle's right hand, "…informed me that the matter was apparently of some great urgency. I apologize that matters of import had me out of town for so long."

Stein wasn't interested in platitudes. He pulled a photograph from his pocket and handed it to the man behind the desk. "Do you know this man?" he asked tersely, and only then seated himself.

Lyle stared down at the picture in his hand and slowly sank into his own chair. Yes, he recognized the face in the photograph well – he'd spent years with Colin Arnham in Nairobi and Johannesburg in his youth, training in various methods of assassination and counter-intelligence. "Should I know him?" he asked in response, putting the photo down in order to watch the FBI agent's face closely.

As he both expected and desired, Stein's face flushed just a little more. Still, he had to admire the professionalism of the FBI man for keeping his voice from showing just how agitated he was. "Our forensics database tells us that the bomb that killed William Raines was made by this man – his name is Colin Arnham. Phone records indicate that you had several conversations with him just before the bombing – one two days before, the other just a few hours before the bomb blast."

"That's right," Lyle nodded. "I believe that I had been given that name in connection to consulting with him on some securities work that the Centre required. My phone calls were merely setting up payment arrangements for his time and expertise." He didn't even blink. "I've never met the man in person – just spoken to him. I had no idea he had a side business of setting car bombs."

"Do you know how to get in touch with Mr. Arnham?" Stein asked bluntly.

"No," Lyle answered honestly. "If you'll notice, those phone records indicate that the calls you mentioned were initiated on Mr. Arnham's end, not in this office."

"You weren't making arrangements to have Mr. Arnham deposit one of his little creations in Mr. Raines' automobile?"

Lyle sat back in his chair comfortably and folded his hands over his chest. "Why would I want to do that?"

"To get into this office," Stein suggested suspiciously.

"For your information," Lyle stated sourly, "my appointment here is provisional. The consortium that controls most of the upper level decisions here at the Centre is awaiting word on my sister, who was in that plane crash in Utah. If she survives, then I will be only a co-chairman."

"How convenient that your sister is most likely dead then now too, is it not?" Stein commented in an equally sour tone. "In fact, that's one coincidence too many, for my money. I suggest that you not leave the area without making sure that you can be reached again." He rose. "I'm sure we'll be having more questions for you as our investigation continues."

"Just call my secretary – she'll be the most informed about my whereabouts on any particular day." Lyle rose and once more put out his hand. "It was a pleasure to meet you, Special Agent Stein."

Stein stared at the outstretched hand without moving a muscle toward shaking it. "I'll be in touch," he promised, and then turned on his heel and strode purposefully to the office door and vanished.

"I told you…" Phil began.

Lyle waved his sweeper into silence. "There is absolutely nothing that ties me to Arnham besides suspicion. Payment was made in cash through intermediaries – there's no paper trail for them to trace. The man's bluffing, and he knows it. Give him and his men access to everything they want to see – providing it isn't any of the higher security computer access. Be cooperative and friendly – even helpful. I want them to leave here with doubts about their own information, is that understood?"

Phil's face didn't soften. "Yes, sir."

"What about Angelo? Have you got him yet?"

"Not yet, sir. We're only getting the gas masks distributed – we have to work around a bunch of FBI agents paying attention to everything we do, you know…"

Lyle sighed and sat back down. "Damn, there is that. OK, hold off on gassing the ventilation system until the FBI has gone – and then do it immediately. We'll deal with those who didn't get the masks in time when we find them. I want that man found and in a nice, secure box."

"Yes, sir. Anything else?"

"No." Lyle turned in his chair and stared out the window at the ocean in the distance. Yes, there was something he needed – the time to go home and finish his ritual, the time to think through what had happened the night before. How many times had he heard "be careful what you wish for – you just might get it?" He'd wished so long and so hard for the right to sit in this chair and direct the actions of the Centre – and now that he had that right, all he wanted was the ability to walk away from it for just a little while.

Damn.

oOoOo

"How long do you think it's going to take them to get here?" Natalie wondered aloud when the sound of the whomp-whomp of the helicopter once more drew near and then faded away.

"They'll get here when they get here," Bennings snapped at her. He too was anxious that the rescuers get there quickly – and not only because he was cold and ready to go back to living comfortably inside warm buildings.

It seemed like over an hour since he'd brought little Emily back into their fold, and in that time, three of his fellow survivors had visibly failed. Parker was now shuddering nearly non-stop and had the pink flush in her pale cheeks that spoke of a fever still on the rise. For that matter, George had started shivering now too and had become non-responsive to direct address. Sydney had long since stopped talking to anybody, and he leaned heavily against Parker's undamaged shoulder with his eyes closed and face deathly pale.

The fire that had made their ordeal so much more bearable had become nothing but a pile of red embers. To keep it going for much longer, someone would have to leave the shelter and gather more of the shattered remains of the trees broken by the crash – and that would mean digging through the snow with unprotected hands. Bennings knew that HE didn't want to do that again – and he was fairly certain that Natalie couldn't be convinced to do it either. The only alternative to that would be to throw some of the piled luggage into the center of the embers and pray that the resulting flame would last long enough.

Emily, tucked under Natalie's arm once more but knowing the woman to be thinking about anything except actually taking care of her, sniffled loudly for the third time in as many minutes and stared with big, blue eyes at him. Bennings bit his tongue to keep from barking at the child and then wondered what had happened to his legendary good humor. He was good with children, he reminded himself – normally he could be surrounded by a small cloud of boisterous and bouncing school kids and deal with both the noise and the level of interruption. But this little urchin that the crash had left in his care – his, because nobody else was in any physical or emotional shape to really take care of her – could get on his nerves with but a single, soft sound.

"Come here, honey," he said finally, putting out a hand to the terrified child, "you can come sit with me."

"No!" Natalie snapped, her arm closing around the child restrictively. "It's my job to keep you all safe – she needs to stay with me!"

Emily began struggling to get free of the stewardess' grip. "Let her go," Bennings told the stewardess sharply. "She wants to come to me."

"Sit still," Natalie told the girl angrily. "I don't want you to get lost again."

"Don't be ridiculous – she's going to be sitting only four feet away from you," Bennings tried to reason with her. "I won't let her go outside without one of us going with her, I promise."

Natalie seemed to waver. "If you're sure…"

"She'll be perfectly safe," Bennings put out his arm again. "Let her come to me."

"For a little while, I suppose…" Natalie's arm lifted from Emily's shoulders, and the little girl scampered quickly over to Benning's side and climbed into his lap.

Emily sighed when she felt the man's arms close around her, and she snuggled down as close to him as she could get. "The fire's going out," she said with a small shiver. "Are we going to freeze?"

"No," Bennings reassured her. "The people who are coming for us will be here long before that."

"I wanna go home, to my Mommy."

Bennings smoothed her hair slowly. "I know you do, sweetheart," he said softly.

His eyes lifted to the portholes in the fuselage, willing himself to see the movement of human figures moving outside the little shelter. Come on, guys, he thought toward the snowy scene outside, where he knew the rescuers had to hike in through the snowdrifts. Hurry up. People here need to get out of here before they die.

oOoOo

There was no doubt that they were getting close – there were visible signs of the trees in the area having been clipped at their very tops by something that had sent a shower of snow clumps and splintered wood to the forest floor below. The progress of the human chain that had slowly made its way down the mountainside slowed even more in order that none of the rescuers would be injured. There was a clearing ahead – and it didn't look like a natural one. Al once more adjusted his grip on the metal basket that he and the man behind him were carrying as they waited for the next short spate of progress.

Fifteen minutes later, the head of the rescue party pushed through past the last standing tree into a huge clearing and got his first look at what was left of the center section of the plane, over the wings. The entire area smelled of spilled and burnt jet fuel, and the signs of the limited fireball that would have happened upon impact were all around. The charred and melted fuselage was scattered, as were seats that had been torn away from their mooring from the violence of the crash. Bodies that remained in the scattered seats all bore several inches of snow, a veil that in some ways minimized and hid the horror.

"Hello!" the leader, Vince, shouted into the eerie silence that enfolded the crash scene. "Hello! Is anyone there?"

As each pair came into the clearing, Vince pointed for them to head off in another direction – and soon the entire area was filled with men calling and listening carefully for voices that could be weak from the cold and injury.

Inside the shelter, Bennings' head came up sharply. Had he heard something? His movement brought Natalie's head up as well, and she immediately looked in the direction of the entrance to their sheltered cabin. "What is it?" she asked, suddenly worried, with her brow wrinkled and her eyes darting in alarm.

"Wait here for me," Bennings told the little girl in his lap and then rose, handing her back into the stewardess' keeping. He pulled the blanket a little tighter around his shoulders, for he'd learned his lesson the last time in diving out into the open without that extra bit of protection, and walked to the entrance and stayed just behind the one panel of aluminum, out of the wind.

There it was again – and the call was echoed by another voice. "Hello!" he called back, frustrated when his voice didn't want to carry very far. "Hello! We're over here!" he tried again, gratified that he was able to summon a little more volume from his throat.

It was Sam, just coming out of the forest into the clearing, who heard that faint answer to the echoing calls from the rescuers. "Hey!" he shouted to the rest of the men in the clearing, milling around aimlessly. "Listen!"

The millling about stopped as if turned off by a switch, and the clearing fell silent again. "Over here!" came the faint call again, and Sam pointed down the mountainside from where they had entered the clearing.

"Down there!" he shouted and, with Ethan easily keeping pace, started making his own path down the mountainside a little further, skirting the edge of the crash scene and trying not to see all of the grisly reminders of the magnitude of what had happened here.

Al too had heard the faint call, and led his partner in the same direction, only on the opposite side of the debris field.

"Hello!" Sam yelled out again, and when his answer came a little louder and from considerably closer, he homed in on the noise. "This way," he shouted to the others, who by now were all moving as quickly as they dared through the field of death.

Bennings felt the first sight of another living, breathing human being making their way down the debris field toward him as if it were a blow to his stomach. Tears rushed to his eyes and he stepped away from the sheltering aluminum, waving his arms madly. "Over here!" he shouted again, and rejoicing when the sound of his voice had a face immediately turning in his direction.

This time, it was Vince who shouted directions to his party and then waved his arms at the blanket-wrapped survivor to let him know that he'd been seen.

Bennings ducked back behind the aluminum. "They're here!" he shouted joyously to those within. "We're saved!"

"God!" Natalie rose quickly to her feet, nearly dumping Emily onto the floor in her hurry. "We're saved!" She pulled her blanket around her and, ignoring the fact that she hadn't put her shoes back on, made a dash for the outside.

Bennings heard the small sound of hurt and shock as Emily's backside hit the ground, and he put his arms out to the little girl so that she had someone to run to. With her in his arms, he couldn't hold his blanket as tightly around them both as he would like, but she seemed willing to make up the loss of one hand with her two.

Al could hardly believe his eyes. A woman was running toward him – a woman wrapped in a blanket, blonde hair straggly with a makeshift sling for one arm and limping slightly from what he finally was able to make out were only stocking covered feet. "Miss!" he dropped his end of the stokes basket as she drew near and caught her in his arms as her strength seemed to fail as she reached him and she stumbled. "You're safe now, Miss…"

Natalie's arm had wrapped itself tightly around the sweeper's neck, and she clung to him as she sobbed as if her heart were breaking. "Hush, Miss," Al said awkwardly, motioning with his eyes for his partner to clear the emergency supplies from the basket and to spread out the thermal blanket for her. "Hush! Is there anybody else alive?"

Vince was already on the radio to the hovering helicopter. "We have survivors, Chopper One. Send down a line for pickup…" He turned and shouted to Al, "Douglas, you and Phillips get that survivor ready for transport. Anybody else?"

"In there," Natalie pointed finally toward the leaning panels of aluminum that hid the shelter from the wind and the rescuers.

"We have more survivors," Al shouted to the rescue leader after he'd gently deposited the shivering woman into the basket and pulled the shining thermal blanket around her body until the only thing that could be seen was her face. "She says they're over there somewhere," he pointed in the same direction Natalie had.

"Atkins, Russell, go check it out – you too, Fender and Gonzalez!" Vince brought his basket over next to where Natalie was being tucked and secured into her basket for being hoisted into the air and into the helicopter for a quick trip back to civilization.

Sam followed the pointing finger and saw a man emerge from behind a sheet of aluminum that had been ripped from the plane's fuselage – and the man had a small child in his arms. "Over here, Sean!" he shouted. "C'mon, Ethan!"

The two men trotted as fast as they could over to Bennings, who looked Sam in the face with complete and utter gratitude. "Thank God you finally got here!" he sighed and let Sam take the little girl from him before his arms gave out. "I don't know how much longer we could have held out."

"Are there any more alive?" Sam demanded, handing the child back to Ethan after seeing that the basket had been emptied of emergency equipment and that the young man was already spreading the thermal blanket to receive her.

"In there," Bennings pointed at the leaning slabs of aluminum and then propping himself with hands on his knees. "They're the ones who are in the worst shape."

Sam glanced over at Ethan, who looked up at him from tucking the thermal blanket around the little girl, and saw the same look of almost desperation in his eyes as he imagined were in his own. "We need more stokes over here!" he yelled and then walked over to where Bennings had pointed. He blinked when he saw how the pieces of torn fuselage had been leaned against an intact part of the fallen aircraft to create a small shelter that was out of most of the wind, and moved past the first piece and then the second until he could see into the cabin.

"Miss Parker!" he gasped and rushed to the woman's side. Sydney was leaning into her and neither of them looked to be in good shape at all. "Miss Parker," he repeated, touching her free shoulder with a gentle hand.

The sudden weight on her injured shoulder brought Miss Parker partly out of her stupor with a low groan, and she stared up into very familiar blue eyes almost incomprehensibly. "What are you doing here?" she mumbled and blinked, trying to focus her eyes. "God, I must be having hallucinations…"

"No, it's really me, Miss Parker," Sam sighed in relief and smiled broadly. "Ethan's outside…"

"Sydney…" Miss Parker tried to look over at her injured colleague and couldn't – her neck had stiffened from being in one position for too long. Her left hand patted at his in a futile attempt to rouse him. "Syd… C'mon – wake up. Sam's here – time to go home…"

"Is there anybody else?" Sam asked gently, his brow furrowing. It was obvious that both Miss Parker and Sydney were in desperate need of medical attention immediately.

"George," Miss Parker pointed vaguely, and Sam stepped around the odd-shaped metal in the middle of the shelter to find another man supine beneath two blankets, shivering badly. He bent over the man and lifted the blanket carefully, and then winced at the long, bloody mess of a dress shirt and the sight of a bandage that looked as if it had been on for too long and with not enough sanitation, not to mention legs that looked as if they were made of spaghetti.

"We have to get you out of here," Sam mumbled to himself and turned. The rescue leader had finally found his way into the little shelter, followed by Ethan and the Centre sweeper. "We have three seriously injured in here, sir," Sam reported to him, his eyes never leaving the face of the sweeper, whose eyes had widened when he'd caught a good look at who was sheltering in that half-demolished cabin.

Vince nodded and turned. "Douglas, get three more stokes in here on the double," he ordered, and then frowned when Al didn't move immediately. "You did hear me, didn't you?" he asked the sweeper.

Al tore his eyes away from the faces of his prey with difficulty, first to look into the eyes of the rescue leader and nod agreement, and then to look over at his fellow rescuer. In that moment, Al knew that his mission was in jeopardy – for his fellow rescuer was well-known in sweeper circles and almost notorious to him by now. This was Sam Atkins, the man he was supposed to have taken out two days earlier and the personal sweeper of the woman he'd been ordered to terminate. As if that wasn't enough, it was obvious that Sam had just gone into full protect mode.

"Douglas, move it!" Vince yelled, confused as to why the man was still standing there. "You've seen injured people before, man – get a move on! Russell, you give assist to Atkins there…"

Al dropped his gaze from where it had been held captive by the intense glare from the other sweeper and turned away. He made his way past the leaning aluminum and called to other team members to bring their baskets closer, his heart pounding hard in his chest. From the glare he was getting from Sam, there was going to be no chance in hell of his fulfilling his mission – at least, not up here. By some fluke of fate, both Miss Parker and Dr. Green had survived the crash, and now were very capably guarded by one of the top sweepers in the entire Centre organization. Tom could complain up his ass, but there was no way he was going to make any attempt on either life for the time being.

Sam heaved a small sigh of relief as the other sweeper vacated the cabin, and he stepped over to Miss Parker again, whose eyes had once more drooped closed. "How is she?" Ethan asked as he stepped closer.

Sam shook his head. Very carefully, hoping not to awaken or disturb her, he pulled back the blanket from where she had it clutched and peered beneath. She was wearing several layers of clothing – they all were – but the sling that held her right arm as immobile as possible was hard to mistake, as was the fact that there was a wet and oozing spot on her right shoulder that marked a deep wound. He pulled his glove from his hand and brushed her cheek – and pulled away rapidly. She was burning with fever.

"Vince, we gotta get these folks outta here ASAP," he announced, straightening. "We have two with high fevers and possible infections from injuries – God only knows what's wrong with S… the older fellow there, he's unconscious."

"Hurry up with them stokes," Vince called again, and then stood aside as three pairs of rescuers made their way one by one into the cramped space.

"Easy now…" Sam cautioned as one pair very carefully lifted Sydney by the knees and the shoulders from his perch next to Miss Parker and laid him in one of the baskets where the thermal blanket was already spread and ready to receive him. "You might want to put a cervical collar on that guy," he directed with some concern before turning. "Your turn, Miss Parker."

He slipped his hand beneath her knees and behind her shoulders and lifted, putting her good shoulder into his chest. Still, the movement was enough to make her cry out weakly in agony. "We gotta get you into the basket," he explained to her urgently and softly. "You need to have a doctor look at you."

"Sydn…"

"He's already being carried out," Sam told her, noting that the old psychiatrist's basket had already vanished. "Your other friend is almost ready to go too."

The grey eyes opened suddenly as she felt herself cradled in a metal nest and yet another blanket being tucked around her. "Thank you," she said with complete lucidity. "I was beginning to think we were dead."

"Not as long as I'm around," Sam told her firmly. "You just hang on." He glanced up at the man at the other end of Miss Parker's rescue stokes – Eames, he thought he'd hear the man called – and nodded. "Let's get her out of here," he said and lifted his end at the same time as the other lifted his.

Outside, the scene was of organized confusion. Two rescuers were controlling the ascent of one of the baskets into the chopper hovering above with guide lines from the head and foot of the stokes. The sandy haired survivor had yet to be hustled into a basket, shaking his head and waving off efforts to get him to lie down in a stokes already prepared for him. Sam carried Miss Parker's basket over to where three others – Sydney, George and Emily – were still awaiting the return of the winch line from above. As he settled her basket back onto the ground, his eye caught Al's again.

With a curt gesture, he summoned the other sweeper closer. "Look," he snarled softly enough that nobody else could hear, "I don't know what your game is, but if either Miss Parker or Sydney suddenly comes up dead…"

Al blanched and threw up his hands. "Hold it. I'm only following orders…"

"Whose orders?" Sam demanded harshly.

"All I know is the word came from Delaware – both to try to find you and your friends at the airport, and then yesterday to head out at first light to take care of a termination order on Miss Parker and the shrink." Al wished he dared back away from the sweeper, but the movement would draw attention to the two of them that neither of them needed. "That's all I know – honest."

"What was the code name on the termination order?"

Al shook his head. "There wasn't one. I never even saw any of the paperwork."

Sam stared. "And still your shop commander shipped you out?"

"We figured things were probably still in an upheaval after Raines' murder…"

"Douglas!" Vince yelled again. "Quit your jawing and help Gonzalez see if there are any more survivors – maybe in the tail section. Atkins – you're the one with medical experience, you go with the worst injuries into the chopper, and then head back out here when you have them loaded into ambulances." He beckoned to Ethan, who had walked from the makeshift shelter behind his sister's rescue basket. "Russell, you stay here with the folks yet to be picked up – I want all of them to be under medical supervision from this moment on." Vince turned away again and began barking orders over the radio to the pilots of the rescue choppers.

Sam's glance met Ethan's and he nodded. This would work out well – he could ride in with Miss Parker and that George fellow, and take care of the sweeper left behind before he knew what was coming. Ethan could watch out for Sydney. All that was left was to make sure the sweeper, Douglas, knew the stakes. He stalked over to where Al was and grabbed him by the elbow. "Am I going to have to worry about you?"

"No, sir," Al answered honestly. "I don't know whose order it was, but I know it was an improper order. We're not supposed to question orders, normally, but…" He gazed at Miss Parker's sweeper. "For what it's worth, I didn't like it. My partner, however, doesn't have much in the way of scruples…"

"I'll take care of him," Sam told him in a quiet voice, and Al's skin crawled. He knew Tom was a dead man. "I just want to make sure I don't' need to take care of you when this is over too."

"No way, man. You don't have to worry about me."

"Douglas! Now!" Vince was starting to sound genuinely angry. "You too, Atkins. This ain't no social visit, girls!"

With a single backwards glance, Sam stalked back over to where the winch line was being attached to Miss Parker's basket. He bent over her. "I'll be up there with you before you know it," he promised her. "You're going to be all right." The grey eyes opened again, but the look this time was a fevered one that saw little that made any sense. He brushed his fingers against her cheek before he could stop himself, and then the basket was away from the ground and moving steadily upward toward the chopper.

Ethan touched his shoulder as he craned to watch the retrieval process. "I'm staying with Sydney – I'll probably ride in with him and the others. Take care of my sister for me."

Sam nodded. "You know I will."

The young man glanced over his shoulder at the other sweeper, who had moved off and climbed the hillside back toward the larger debris field. "What about that sweeper? Do I need to be on my guard?"

"Just keep your eye on him," Sam suggested. "He says he's ready to back off – but you never know."

"What about the other one?"

Sam's face grew grim, and Ethan knew better than to ask any further. "See you, then," he waved his hand.

"Stay alert," Sam called as he caught the boson's chair that had been lowered to him. "Take care of Sydney for me."

oOoOo

Tom Coachman was sipping coffee with the rest of the people who had turned out to offer assistance in the rescue of any survivors of the United flight when the word came that six survivors had been found – and that they were being flown directly in to the Ogden hospital. A cheer went up from the crowd of men and women that had gathered around the ranger's station waiting for news, and some immediately jumped into vehicles to race back into Ogden – Tom was among them.

His face was grim. If Al hadn't had the opportunity to take care of Miss Parker or Sydney up on the mountain – IF they had actually survived – then it would be up to him to take care of them in the hospital BEFORE anyone could identify them and/or place guards around them. The Tower was depending upon him to make sure that the termination order was followed, and he was damned if he was going to let either of those two slip through his fingers.

Besides, he had a sneaking suspicion that Al had turned soft on him. Al had been trained in Blue Cove, after all – where he'd trained in Los Angeles. Al had often mentioned his days in Delaware, and how much he'd admired the Chairman's daughter as a model of how a Centre sweeper should act and perform under pressure. He'd seen the slightly disquieted looks that Al had worn when he thought that Tom wasn't looking. Al was a liability to the code of absolute obedience to the Tower if he put his personal feelings above unquestioning response.

Hospitals were easy to infiltrate – and a termination order on an already seriously hurt human wasn't very hard to carry out. All it took was a little creativity, knowing hospital protocol and how to control IV drip machines, and a pair of latex gloves to leave no telltale evidence behind. All of these, Tom had in abundance.

oOoOo

Jarod's fingers tapped an impatient tattoo on the arm of his seat, and he turned to stare out the window at the rolling, snow-covered mountains below him. Somewhere down there was Carl, Sydney and Miss Parker – and Ethan and Sam, if there was any luck in the world at all. There were Centre sweepers down there too, hunting at least three of them. And there was an assassin on the plane, who had been paid a large amount of money to see to it that Carl never arrived in San Francisco.

This was ridiculous, he shook his head at himself. He'd turned his back on this entire scene – walked away from them all, with the exception of Ethan. And yet here he was, flying in to try to lend a last-inning assist. No wonder Emily could get so disgusted with him. As much as he'd tried, as far away as he'd managed to take himself from the Centre, there was no way to completely flush the Centre from him – it was a part of who he was, who he had become.

All was in a holding pattern in Philadelphia. A conference call to the trustees had put the entire organization on stand-by, pending his call either confirming Carl's death or announcing his having survived the crash. Hendricks was under lock and key in the Philadelphia jail, awaiting arraignment on a variety of charges, and Blair either had already joined him by this time or soon would be joining him behind bars.

He should have been at least satisfied that part of the puzzle had been taken care of – but he wasn't. His heart was pounding and he was having a hard time sitting still. As an afterthought, he hauled out his current favorite Pez dispenser and snatched one of the tiny fruit-flavored sugar cubes from the exposed stack, thinking that a small taste of comfort food might help.

It didn't.

The pilot's voice came over the intercom. "We're making our descent into Salt Lake City, where the outside temperature is a brisk…" Jarod stopped paying attention to the normal drivel. He wanted to be on the ground, and he wanted to be in his rental car heading to Ogden.

It simply wasn't happening fast enough.


	13. In the Crosshairs

Chapter Thirteen – In the Crosshairs

Lyle looked up from his paperwork when Phil stepped into the office after a single knock. "Are they gone yet?"

"Finally." Phil's sour voice demonstrated his frustration. "We let them look all over the place – everywhere reasonable, that is – and they've finally left."

"And…"

"And the gas is going into the sublevel ventilation system as we speak," the sweeper finished the sentence for his boss. "I had the environmental engineers isolate the Tower ventilation system from that of the underground complex first, though – I figured YOU'D just as soon not wear a gas mask…"

"Just find me that creeping idiot Angelo," Lyle looked back down at the contracts he'd been working on. "Any word from Utah?"

"Nothing."

"Shit." Lyle threw down his pen and stalked over to the window, not for the first time that day. "They did send out their best…"

"That's what I told 'em to do, sir," Phil nodded firmly. "I'm told Al Douglas is one of the best in the whole organization…"

"No, Sam is the best in the whole organization, now that Willy's dead," Lyle told his sweeper frankly, "with you coming in fourth or fifth in line, if memory serves. And Sam is not only still out there, but probably close to being on the job – Broots too."

"A lot of good that will do either of them with Miss Parker and Sydney pushing up daisies," Phil stated and flashed a toothy grin.

"We hope." Lyle knew better than to count his chickens yet. His sister had escaped far too many of his traps already to be counted out yet. "How's our Triumvirate watchdog doing?"

"Keeping busy with some of the oversight reports at the moment," Phil announced, this time with a more sincere grin. "You know, the THICK ones…" He gestured to illustrate his point.

Lyle ducked his head to hide the smirk. "Good. Let me know the minute we either have Angelo in custody or we hear from Utah, understood?"

"Yes, sir!"

"You're dismissed, then." Lyle waited until Phil had left the office and the doors were closed again before seating himself back behind the massive desk and plunking his chin in his fist.

Now that the FBI issue had been handled – at least, temporarily – there really was no reason for him to be hanging around the Centre. He glanced down at the research contracts and then pushed them away in a fit of bored frustration. He hadn't worked this hard and this long to sit here by the hour studying contract terms. There were meetings with governmental officials to arrange – contacts that Mr. Raines had left untouched while he wasted good money and valuable time trying to reconstitute the Pretender Project and/or start a new one. There were military projects that had been put on hold due to lack of funding when money earmarked for them had been sidetracked into investigative channels. So much of what was wrong with this place had been the result of mismanagement.

That would change, he decided as he tucked the contract back into its manila folder and tossed it back into his In box. Tomorrow. Today, there was a victory ritual meal to be prepared and eaten, and a good night's sleep to enjoy – to recharge his batteries completely. After all, he hadn't really gotten very much sleep the night before…

Erin – his mind both shied away from her and yet found her irresistible. She was dangerous – she was poison to him. And yet, he couldn't help but smile as the memory of her hands smoothing down his chest, her kisses opening beneath his, her body accepting and demanding more of his, made his heart beat just a little faster. She was an addiction, he realized – one from which he wasn't entirely sure he wanted to be cured.

What had she thought when she awakened to find him gone – without a note or a flower or a single word? Had he burned his bridges with her – would she even speak to him again? Did he really want to know?

He glanced at the telephone on his desk and knew that he had her cell phone number on a slip of paper in his wallet. It would be so easy to just reach out and see if he'd ruined everything by walking away without a goodbye, without saying he was sorry, without even a word of insincere fondness…

It wouldn't have been insincere, Lyle chided himself. She was a beautiful young woman and he genuinely liked her – found her to be intelligent and funny and great fun to spend time with. He closed his eyes and for a brief moment let himself daydream about calling her again – asking her out on another date, and maybe even ending up in her apartment again for a nightcap that would result in another night in her arms. He could learn to live a double life – Chairman of the Centre by day, ordinary man in love with a pretty woman in the evening…

No! He shook himself and dragged his briefcase up to his desk. He couldn't afford the luxury of soft feelings anymore. He was the Chairman of the Centre – he'd damned well better learn to act like one. Love and the like weren't for him. He had a destiny, and it didn't include either the time or the danger of continuing to see a pretty blonde university student from Baltimore.

He had a meal to prepare. THAT was his destiny.

oOoOo

Sam felt as if he was in a time distortion. He had a stethoscope draped around his neck and a set of headphones and a microphone that allowed him to radio his readings of vitals from the three crash survivors in front of him to the hospital emergency physician. Had it not been so blasted cold outside, he could have believed himself back in Kuwait – or if one of the people laid out in rescue stokes wasn't a pretty brunette with storm-grey eyes and a reputation of ice and steel, that is.

The three baskets were strapped head to foot along the back wall of the helicopter, and he kept up a continual narrative with the hospital on Natalie's, George's and Miss Parker's condition. Natalie was not so seriously injured – she had a broken arm and seemed to have more of a case of emotional shock than anything else. It was George and Miss Parker who were Sam's chief concerns. Both were running fevers which seemed to be steadily climbing – both had wounds that more than likely had turned into raging infections. Both would no doubt need surgery to repair the damage and clean the wounds so that they could finally begin to heal.

No doubt, those who had been left behind at the ranger's station had by now been apprised of the news of survivors and what was going to be done with them. That meant that the second sweeper – the one who was alleged to have no scruples at all – would be hurrying back down the mountain roads to the hospital as quickly as possible, so as to take care of anything his partner had 'missed' up on the mountain.

Sam had no illusions. Hospitals were dangerously insecure places by definition. All it would take would be a lab coat, latex gloves and a little imagination to make a sweeper into a highly effective assassin – he really didn't like to think how many times his job had been to do something very similar. There would be no resting for him now until he'd taken care of that persistent sweeper himself – and until that time, he'd be sticking to Miss Parker's side like glue.

He moved so that he could feel the comforting bulk of his sidearm resting just below his armpit. With any luck, it wouldn't come down to that – but he wasn't holding his breath. The sweeper up on the mountain was right – sweepers were trained never to question their orders, no matter where they came from. That he'd met up with the one sweeper with a conscience had been serendipity – he wasn't going to count on being given any quarter from the man he'd be protecting Miss Parker from now.

A glance downward told him that she'd opened her eyes again and was looking at him with some measure of lucidity again. "We're taking you to the hospital," he told her and watched the information actually penetrate. "Just hang on a bit more – and you'll get the help you need."

The grey eyes closed again, and the entire face relaxed. Sam moved quickly to check on George and found his second patient unconscious; and a quick check with an aural thermometer in the ear reported that his temperature had climbed another two tenths of a degree. There was very little he could do for the man with the equipment and supplies he had at hand, and keeping him warm in the chilly chopper interior was essential. A severe chill now could lead to even worse complications later.

Sam looked forward through the door in the bulkhead and the chopper's windshield beyond to see that they were already flying over rooftops. They were in the city. Soon, he nodded to himself. Soon.

oOoOo

Ethan stared down into the face of the man his half-brother still considered a father-figure and found himself wondering what it would have been like had he had a Sydney of his own to watch over him. Jarod's emotions regarding this man were about as convoluted as any he'd ever known – an almost toxic combination of respect, hatred, worship, disdain, love and bitterness that seemed doomed to never be resolved. Jarod had never been able to connect with his real father the way he had always been able to connect with this man – and didn't dare try to connect with Sydney the way he truly wanted to for fear of being rejected yet again.

And now, Sydney was injured badly. Ethan had watched Sam work over the old man briefly, and knew how worried the sweeper had been for his colleague. The lump on the old man's temple was huge and angry-looking – a concussion was probably the least of the man's injuries. Whatever else could be wrong with him that had resulted in this persistent unconsciousness had to be pretty serious. Even Parker had expressed worry about him.

That was right. His sister was close to Sydney too – he knew that. During one of their very few private talks, Sydney's name had come up in passing – and the emotions that had been broadcast in the mere act of saying his name at the time were mixed, although nowhere near as conflicted as his half-brother's. She was openly fond of him in her own way, and yet had had occasion to learn to distrust him. Like Jarod, she'd had this man in her life for decades – he could only speculate as to how Sydney felt about either of his siblings.

"Give us a hand, Russell," Vince yelled as the second rescue chopper hovered overhead and the backwash from the rotors threatened to drown all voices out completely. Ethan nodded and helped move Sydney's stokes over to where the winch line would be uncompromised, and then stood back as Vince and another manipulated the steel cable so that it was firmly attached to the lifting straps. Vince lifted his face and gave a jerking thumb upwards sign for the winch to being lifting, and Sydney's basket began to rise.

Next would be the basket with the little girl in it – a child who looked positively terrified at the prospect facing her. Ethan bent over her. "It's really very safe," he tried to reassure her. "And I'll be up there with you after just a little bit. Can you trust me?"

Deep blue eyes just stared at him. Ethan wondered if the girl really comprehended everything that had gone on around her – or the shock of being left all alone among strangers in the middle of such terror. Briefly he hoped that Sydney recovered to the point that he'd be able to do some counseling for the little girl before the trauma destroyed her utterly.

Bennings would be the last to go before they sent down the boson's chair for him. It had taken Vince and Ethan and another rescuer to finally convince the man that he would be best removed from the crash site in a rescue stokes, and still more effort to get him to stay still long enough to get wrapped up in the thermal blanket and strapped securely in place. The man seemed determined to look out over the grisly desolation of the debris field as if hoping that the rescuers would come up with another survivor from somewhere. The pair that had been sent down the mountain to try to find the tail section had yet to report in, for that matter.

Ethan took one of the dangling guide ropes and, partnered with a rescuer named Eames, made sure that the basket didn't spin out of control or sway back and forth wildly as it was drawn inexorably up to the wide-open door of the hovering chopper. The airman would then first disengage the guide ropes to be attached to the next basket, and then disconnect the winch cable so it could be sent down once more.

When at last the final basket was safely aboard the chopper, Vince helped Ethan settle himself into the boson's chair and then held the guide rope until Ethan lifted his arms and was swung into the belly of the chopper, whereupon the rescue leader gave a call to rally the remaining men to the grim task of going through the wreckage inch by inch.

Ethan found himself handed a stethoscope, an aural thermometer, a clipboard with a tethered pencil and then informed that the headphones and microphone set hanging on the side of the chopper wall linked him directly to the hospital that was awaiting their arrival. He nodded and bent immediately to gathering vital information to relay to the hospital so that they could adequately prepare for this second wave of victims.

He'd be glad when he got to the hospital, and could have Sam at his back protecting both Parker and Sydney against whoever was still threatening them. The danger wasn't gone yet – far from it.

oOoOo

"I'm surprised nobody's ever tried to put these together," Detective Bill Lowe shook his head over the assorted file folders scattered across the table in an interview room that had been co-opted for a new purpose. A white board was set up at one end of the room, upon which hung the pictures of seven Asian women that had been murdered in one Atlantic seaboard state after another over the past three years. Beneath each picture of a smiling face was a date and another picture, far less amenable, of the condition in which each body had been discovered eventually.

It had taken the better part of a day to get the files faxed from the various cities and townships on the women – but less than an hour of cross-referencing and comparing the investigators' notes to begin to see the real similarities between the crimes. All the women had been repeatedly raped and then strangled. Each bore the handprint of a man missing a thumb. And each woman had had a significant portion of a muscular part of her body sliced away, never to be found.

Detective Stan Bridges pinched his nose between his eyes. "I think they all have," he replied tiredly – they'd been staring at the notes from the interviews with the friends and roommate of the latest victim for another two hours. "I just think we got lucky and got a few more details that they did about the perp."

Lowe rose from his seat, stretched out an aching back, and walked over to a second white board that had been brought in just a few minutes ago. In the center of it, he drew an oval. "OK," he sighed. "What do we know about this bastard besides…" he began writing, "…he's missing a vital appendage?"

"Dark hair, blue eyes," Bridges picked up his notebook and began to read. "Businessman from out of state – perhaps Delaware. Currently sporting a black eye." He dropped the notebook on the well-populated table. "How the hell are we going to find a businessman with a black eye and missing a thumb this far away from someplace that isn't even in our jurisdiction?"

"I dunno…" Lowe offered with wide-spread hands as he walked back to his seat and slumped, "get in touch with various Chambers of Commerce and see if any of their members are missing a thumb?"

Bridges just shook his head. "There's gotta be something…" He sorted through the scattered papers and notebooks until he found the one he wanted. "What about this girl – Erin Patterson? She said that she thought she might have been dating the same guy…"

"It's possible," Lowe stared at the white board and the collection of pictures. "The Patterson girl is a nice Aryan blonde – all of these ladies come from points Far East."

"I'm saying that we should talk to her again," Bridges said, tucking his pen in his shirt pocket. "If the guy she was seeing gets in touch with her, we need to BE there so we can tail him, find out who he is and investigate him." He reached behind him for his overcoat. "You have her address, in case she's not at her work?"

Lowe picked up his notebook from that morning. "I do now. Let's go – at this point we have nothing to lose," Lowe replied and reached for his jacket as he rose from the chair. It was getting late in the afternoon, and he could hope that he could go home after interviewing the Patterson woman again. Besides, the weather had turned downright chilly lately, and he didn't need to catch a cold.

No sirree. What he needed to catch was a serial killer. The cold could wait.

oOoOo

Broots rose from his chair and walked over to finger the curtains aside and look out over the parking lot of the motel once more. It had been an extremely long day, and with no word from either Sam or Ethan, it was growing longer still. Jarod had been so sure that Miss Parker was alive – that Ethan's 'voices' couldn't be wrong – that Broots had allowed himself to buy into that.

But what if she was gone – what if they both were dead? Broots glanced back into the room to where Debbie sat staring at the television screen. Miss Parker's death would be a hard blow to his daughter. The two of them had grown close over the years, and he knew that Debbie had in many ways transferred the affection she'd once felt for her mother to Miss Parker. Hell, if Miss Parker were gone, it would be a blow to him too.

No, he couldn't let himself think about such things. They had to be OK…

When his cell phone began its chirping, it nearly made him jump out of his skin – and even Debbie started badly. Broots rushed back to where he'd set up the laptop and snatched the little device to his ear. "What?"

"Only Miss Parker is supposed to answer like that," Sam announced in a very tired voice.

"Sam!" Broots breathed, and Debbie was up immediately and coming over to join her father. "Have you… did you…"

"We found them – and they're both alive," Sam broke the news without any preamble whatsoever – exactly the way he'd want to receive the news himself. "I flew into the hospital with Miss Parker, Ethan should be coming in behind me with Sydney in just a few minutes. They're hurt – maybe badly – but they're alive."

"What about that danger?" Broots demanded. "Was Ethan wrong?"

"Nope. There was a pair of sweepers at the ranger station, and one managed to get onto the rescue team."

Broots' eyes got big. "Did you have to…"

"Not yet. The one who ended up on the mountain said that the termination orders were unusual – no code name for the person ordering the hit, and no paperwork whatsoever. He was easy to talk into standing down. The fellow left behind, however, may end up being a different story. I don't know yet."

"Where are you?"

"At the Ogden hospital. They just took Miss Parker into surgery before I called you – she's not doing so good right now." Sam didn't like to think of the mess that the doctors had uncovered when they'd cut the bandages away from her shoulder. "I'll call back when I know more."

"OK…" Broots nodded in relief at Debbie, who ran her hands over her hair in utter relief and smiled a shaky smile. "You take care." He disconnected the call. "He says she's pretty badly hurt, but she's alive."

The cell phone had no more been put back down on the table next to the laptop when it began to chirp again. Feeling a little more himself, Broots picked it up and answered, "Hello?"

"Mr. Broots – is there any word?" It was Jarod – and there were the sounds of many people in the background.

"Sam just called – they're both still alive and heading to the Ogden hospital," Broots repeated the news. "The Centre sent two sweepers to take care of them – but Sam got one of them to stand down."

"Where's Ethan? Did he find you?"

"He went with Sam – and Sam said that he was with Sydney."

"They're both alive." Jarod's voice grew soft, as if he was trying to process something he'd only barely allowed himself to dream. "Danger's past, I take it."

"Not entirely." Broots' voice grew grim. "One sweeper backed down, but the other hasn't yet. Sam wasn't giving me many details…"

"I doubt he needs to," Jarod stated darkly. "I'm on my way to rent a car and drive up to Ogden myself. Where are you?"

Broots gave Jarod directions to the motel and then disconnected to stare at his daughter. "He's coming."

"Jarod?" She straightened and turned to look at him. "Isn't the Centre still looking for him?"

"The Centre doesn't know he's involved – him OR Ethan. And I'll bet that Sam isn't in the mood to haul him in to Mr. Lyle."

"He's coming here, though?"

Broots shrugged. "I'm not sure. He'll probably head to the hospital first." It was what HE'D do, if he were in Jarod's shoes… If it weren't for the sweeper attempting to swoop in on Miss Parker and Sydney – and probably all of THEM, if they knew what they looked like – the hospital would be where HE'D be heading right now too.

oOoOo

Erin hung up her apron with a sigh of relief. This had quite possibly been the most difficult day in her life – and even repeated glowers from her boss at the register hadn't been able to entirely convince her to paste on a happy face. Veronica had finally had a word with him, and he'd eased up a bit – but Erin was still glad when her shift was finished.

The only problem was, she wasn't entirely keen on the idea of going home. Going home would mean that she'd come face to face with the memories of what had happened the night before – memories that, until her talk with the policemen earlier, she'd hoped to keep reliving. Now the mere thought of what had happened last night was enough to send her stomach into knots again. She didn't exactly know what she was going to do.

One thing she did know was that the two men who were walking toward her down the sidewalk were the last people she really wanted to see. "Miss Patterson," Detective Lowe waved at her. "Could we have a word with you, please?"

"I'm really tired," she complained, settling her purse a little higher on her shoulder. "Can't this wait…"

"We really don't think so," Stan Bridges shook his head. "Is there someplace where we can go to speak a little more privately?"

Erin thought about leading the policemen back into the coffee deli and then discarded the idea entirely. "There's McDonald's across the street," she suggested, her voice echoing her reluctance.

The three waited in silence for the traffic light to turn and then walked briskly across the busy street and into the fast food establishment. "Over there," Lowe pointed out a table with one chair and benches; and while he escorted Erin, Bridges went up to the counter and ordered three soft drinks. He handed Erin hers and let her sip on the bubbly drink a bit to get her balance again.

"So," Erin finally raised her head from her soda and looked across the table at the policemen, "what is it you wanted to talk to me about?"

"We were wondering if you'd be willing to let us tap your phone line, in case your boyfriend calls back," Lowe dove ahead, figuring it was better to get the request out in the open right away. "And if he wants you to meet him, if you'd be willing to wear a wire…"

"Is he really a suspect?" Erin looked back and forth from one serious and earnest face to the other.

"At the moment, frankly, yes," Bridges answered bluntly. "That doesn't mean he did it – it just means that given the evidence at hand, we're looking at him seriously. If nothing else, anything that happens as the result of your cooperation could do no less than clear him, you know…"

"You want to bug my phone line – why?"

"Because we need an ID on the guy – or at least on your boyfriend. We're reaching out of our jurisdiction here a little, but until we can do the legwork that will either clear or connect your friend to Miss Fu…" Lowe shrugged. "If the guy's clean, don't you want to be sure?"

Erin's eyes narrowed. "Look, I've been around law enforcement a good part of my life – I know that this is going to be a high-profile case, and that you two will be under a lot of pressure to nail someone for it. How do I know that you two aren't just going to railroad the first guy who even breathes wrong?"

Bridges and Lowe glanced at each other and then back at the young woman. "You're right, this is going to be high-profile," Lowe admitted, "but not for the reasons you think. Cherry Fu was only the latest in a long line of rape-murders that all wear the same 'signature' injuries. The man we're looking for is a serial rapist and a serial killer, Miss Patterson. The moment the press gets a hold of this, we're going to be under pressure – and there's a good chance that you'll get your share of publicity, being as how you were one of the last people to see Cherry alive."

Erin's eyes widened and she sat back in shock. "Now wait a minute!"

Bridges just leaned forward. "That's why we want you to cooperate with us, Miss Patterson. We want to nail the RIGHT guy – because if we don't, somebody else will die eventually. Your help will mean we can either exclude or focus in on someone who at least superficially matches the description of the man who registered the room where Miss Fu was raped and tortured and probably killed…"

"Tortured?" Erin blanched. "You hadn't said anything about…"

"That's something we're not releasing to the public," Lowe scowled at his partner, "and we'd appreciate it if you kept it under your hat. Bottom line: will you help us?"

"What did he do to her?" Erin's voice was small.

Bridges shook his head. "You really don't want to know. Trust me."

Erin's gaze darted back and forth between one face and the next, her stomach in even tighter knots now than it had been while considering whether to go home. "OK," she said finally, throwing her hands wide and away from her soda. "Do it. Whatever you want – tap my phone, tap my cell phone for that matter. I'll wear a wire."

The two police officers exchanged a glance of pure relief. "I can't tell you how…" Lowe started.

"But if you're wrong, and if my… friend… didn't do anything…" Her voice rose slightly and her blue eyes snapped. "You do realize that you'll have some serious apologizing to do – to me, to Lyle…"

"If your friend is innocent, he won't mind what you're doing now," Bridges said evenly. "He'd want to be ruled out as a suspect, don't you think?"

"Thanks for the soda," Erin said sourly and rose. "When will you have the tap on my phone lines?"

"Probably by later this evening," Lowe replied, pulling out a sheet of paper. "If you don't mind signing this – it would mean we don't have to get a warrant because we have your permission…"

She bent quickly, took his pen and dashed her name at the bottom of the document. "Are we finished?"

Both men rose. "Thank you, Miss Patterson. You won't regret this."

"Yeah, right."

She already did. How could she be expected to return home NOW? How did she intend to live with the memories of Lyle making love to her, knowing that he was suspected of not only rape and murder, but multiple rapes – multiple murders. And torture??

There was a cinema multiplex on the way to her apartment. Maybe this was the night she watched a couple of movies instead of going home to study. And to hell with the research paper…

oOoOo

As Miss Parker was the only one in surgery at the moment, with Sydney undergoing tests in the Emergency Room, Ethan had relinquished the task of guarding his sister to her personal sweeper – a man whom he frankly doubted would be willing to take a second chair at this point. Sam had a hard and determined look on his face that told Ethan not even to try to argue for a different arrangement.

And so he found himself sitting at the entrance to the ER, making sure that nobody that didn't have business in there got past without being seen. Each of the lesser injured crash survivors had been moved to hospital beds except Sydney now – the doctors wanted to observe them all overnight to make sure there were no hidden injuries that had slipped through the cracks.

"Ethan," a soft, low voice called to him, and he turned with a relieved smile to face his half-brother.

"Jarod." The two men hugged briefly.

"How are they?"

Yes, it made sense that Jarod would want the truth laid out straight and unembellished in front of him immediately. "Miss Parker's still in surgery – Sam's standing guard just outside the operating room door," he added when Jarod's eyes flashed in alarm. "Sydney's in there, waiting his turn. He hasn't regained consciousness yet – the doctors are suspecting a concussion and other back injuries." He caught at Jarod's arm. "And Carl Bennings – isn't he your boss?"

Jarod stared. "Yeah?"

"He's just been transferred up to a wardroom for overnight observation."

"Not seriously injured?" Jarod's face went from worry to relief.

"A few cuts and scrapes – that's all," Ethan reported.

Jarod gazed at Ethan and then peered into the ER past the plastic window, and Ethan could feel that mixed emotion as Jarod struggled with wanting to be by the side of his friend and employer on the one hand and to be by the side of his mentor and father-figure on the other. "He's unconscious, Jarod – he won't know that you were here if nobody says anything to him. Go – see your friend. I'll be right here unless they move George Stoller out of surgery and take Sy…"

"Who?" Jarod grabbed Ethan's collar. "Who did you say?"

"George Stoller – another one of the survivors. Two broken legs, a horrible and infected gash that had him nearly ripped open…"

"He's the assassin…" Jarod glared at his younger half-brother.

"WHAT?"

"Hendricks hired an assassin to kill Carl before he could do anything in San Francisco. One I caught myself about a week ago – Stoller we didn't find out about before the plane left." Jarod's face had gone pale. "He survived?"

"Only barely," Ethan told him.

Jarod stood, thinking for a moment and then nodded. "I'll handle it," he said quietly and then looked up at his little brother. "Watch over Sydney for me for a while – I have a few things I have to take care of."

Jarod strode off toward the front desk, manned by a volunteer. "I need the room number for Carl Bennings," he stated urgently.

"Mr. Bennings is in 107, bed 2," the older woman said after checking her booklet.

"Thanks." The Pretender walked into the hallway of the hospital and followed the signs to the medical floor, and then turned to his right and walked until he'd found room 107. He pushed through the door and peeked in.

"Jarod!" Bennings' grin lit his face. "God, it's good to see a familiar face at last!"

"It's just good to see you still alive and kicking," Jarod replied, stepping up to the bedside and shaking the man's hand vigorously. "You had us mighty worried."

"I bet." Bennings' grin faltered. "Listen, there's something you should know," he started.

"I know all about it," Jarod told his friend as he pulled a chair up so he could sit down and visit for a short time. "Hendricks is in jail – and so is Blair." Then he blinked. "How did you know…"

"While we were going through some of the baggage for extra clothing and useful things, I found the rifle the assassin Hendricks hired was going to use on me – along with my picture with instructions in Hendricks' own handwriting." Bennings frowned. "And to think I was going to put that asshole in charge of San Francisco, once it was going properly."

"There's something else," Jarod said, his eyes glued to his friend's face. "George Stoller – your fellow survivor?"

"Yeah?" Benning's frowned in confusion. "He was in pretty bad shape. What about him?"

Jarod's lips tightened and then he blurted, "He was the one Hendricks hired to kill you."

Bennings paled and fell back against his pillow in shock. "You're sure?"

Jarod nodded sadly. "There's not a question in my mind."

"Damn!" Bennings gazed at his friend. These past few days hadn't been easy on his Security Chief at all. "You OK?"

"Hmmm?" Jarod was pulled from a reverie before it had a chance to really catch him. "Yeah, I'm OK now, for the most part." He shook himself. "The trustees are probably sitting on pins and needles, waiting for me to call and let them know…"

"I'll call them," Bennings announced, putting out his hand. "Give me your cell phone and I'll take care of it right now." He grimaced at a twinge – probably from strained muscles from hefting around heavy pieces of broken aircraft fuselage. "I'm tired of sitting around and doing nothing."

"OK." Jarod handed him the cell phone and rose. "I have a few things I need to do – including arranging for Mr. Stoller's arrest. I'll let you get some rest, and I'll be back in later to get my cell phone back and see how you're doing."

Bennings nodded and waved, already having dialed a well-remembered number. Jarod waved back and left the room. A quick question at the medical floor nurses' station got him instructions as to where the waiting room for the surgical unit was, and he headed off in that direction with brisk steps. No doubt the entrance to the operating theatre was in the same direction – and that was where he'd find Sam.

oOoOo

Tom Coachman eyed the emergency room entrance for a long moment before deciding that the front lobby would be a better place to enter. He nosed the Centre-issue sedan into a parking spot and locked it carefully and patted under his arm to make sure his sidearm was in place.

Hospitals were notoriously difficult to secure – even if his intended targets knew of his intentions, stopping him would be virtually impossible without bodyguards. All he had to do now was find out if his targets had survived the crash and been brought in – and then find out where they were. The key would be to figure out just what kind of person would the hospital release that kind of information TO – the media was out, at least temporarily.

NTSA – that was it! He had a badge of sorts – he could flash it a little too quickly for anyone to really get a good look and claim to be NTSA and demand to see the survivors. With any luck, he'd discover that the people he was looking for hadn't survived the crash after all and all this effort had been expended for nothing. He seriously doubted that the Centre would spring to fill a paycheck for Al remaining up on the mountain any longer than necessary…

He walked right up to the volunteer's desk. "What room is Miss Parker in?" he asked with a deceptively gentle smile.

The grey-haired woman checked her notebook. "I'm sorry, sir," she looked up at him eventually, "but I don't have a Miss Parker anywhere in my book. Are you certain she was admitted?"

"I was fairly certain…" Tom adopted what he called back home an 'aw-shucks' attitude. "I heard she was one of them plane crash survivors and I rushed right over…"

"We don't have any information about some of those people yet," the woman told him, trying to be helpful. "Two of them are in surgery and one is still in the emergency room being treated." Her eyes narrowed. "You aren't the press, are you?"

"No, ma'am." He flashed the badge quickly. "NTSA – I was hoping to talk to any of the survivors who is conscious."

The woman shook her head. "We don't have any of that kind of information available here," she told him. "You'll have to speak to Dr. Wolsey – he's the man in charge of the emergency room tonight."

"Thank you kindly, ma'am," Tom said and looked around. "How do I get to the emergency room from here?"

Jarod turned left into the main hallway and began walking toward the operating room, not exactly sure what he would say to Miss Parker's sweeper when he got there. Somehow, "Hi, fancy meeting you here," just didn't seem appropriate – although under the circumstances, he felt fairly confident that Sam's first impulse would NOT be to throw him into handcuffs and haul him back to the Centre. They were all Centre refugees at the moment.

The Pretender's eyes widened, however, as he noted the shape and intent in the walk of the man who turned into the hallway in front of him and continued walking in the same direction. His steps faltered for a moment, then continued a little more softly. If this was the Centre sweeper sent by Lyle to take out Sydney and Miss Parker, it would pay for him to hang back a bit until he saw the man do something definitive – something with an aim to harm – before landing on him and calling for hospital security.

When the man turned and walked past Ethan and through the swinging doors into the emergency room, Jarod sped up – trotting up to next to his brother.

"Is that…?" Ethan whispered.

"More than likely," Jarod replied. He stared through the plastic window into the ER, and watched the sweeper approach and speak to the physician in charge. Evidently the sweeper didn't like what he was hearing, for he looked over at one of the patient beds with frustration. Jarod smiled as he followed the man's gaze. Sydney was under the watchful care of technicians maneuvering the portable x-ray machine – there was no chance the sweeper would be able to execute the termination order without taking out a whole roomful of medical personnel. "Watch it!" Jarod warned and faded back into a doorway when the sweeper stalked from the room in a huff.

"What now?" Ethan asked, his eyes on the sweeper's back.

"Now I keep an eye on this fellow – I have a sneaky hunch I know where he's heading…"

"Parker…" Ethan's eyes widened.

"No." Jarod was adamant. "You stay here and watch over Sydney. I'll make sure he doesn't harm a hair on Parker's head."

"Not this time." Ethan was no less determined than his half-brother. "I need to go with you. This is the danger – this is the man I was trying to protect Sydney from."

Jarod thought quickly and then nodded. "OK," he conceded. "Come on."

oOoOo

Thoroughly frustrated, Tom stalked down the hallway toward the operating room. From there he'd be able to watch and see where they took Miss Parker after she finished in surgery – there was a chance that he'd have an opportunity to at least take care of HER in the Recovery Room. If not, then he'd wait until she'd been assigned a room on the medical floor.

What frosted him more than anything was that Al let BOTH of their targets slip through his fingers. The older sweeper could have made sure he was on one of the rescue choppers, couldn't he? Both the psychiatrist and the former Chairman's daughter were in serious condition – it didn't strain disbelief to consider that one or the other of them could have expired on the way into the hospital…

Ah well. What was done was done – and it would be HIS job to clean up the mess.

He turned the corner and walked up to the swinging doors that led into the operating room and halted to stare inside. Miss Parker was evidently still on the table. Tom sighed. He could wait in the surgical waiting room, just as if he were a regular family member.

He turned around and walked back the few paces it took to get to the waiting room door and then stared. Rising from his seat, his face a study in concern and alertness, was someone else – someone large and muscular and obviously nobody to fool with. Tom raised his eyes to look at the man's face and found himself transfixed by the sharp gaze – and felt himself freeze. This was no ordinary person awaiting news of a loved one. This was Miss Parker's personal sweeper, ready to take on any perceived threat to his boss.

Tom swallowed hard. What had been, up until then, a cakewalk had suddenly turned very dangerous.


	14. Out Of The Frying Pan

Chapter Fourteen – Out of the Frying Pan

It was the quintessential Centre standoff, and Jarod wasn't certain if he wanted to laugh or run. Sam had a look of determination on his face that warned anybody with even the lowest IQ that messing with him would be a bad idea. The other sweeper looked surprised and disquieted for a moment, and then his face soured down into an equal level of determination.

"I suggest you turn around and go in the other direction," Sam stated softly and dangerously. "No paperwork and no codename for a termination order means that if whatever power politics are being played go down badly – or if whoever is organizing a coup decides to eliminate loose ends – you'll end up wishing you had walked away when you had the chance."

"Something tells me that the termination order we were given yesterday included you," Tom responded without moving a muscle. "That same something tells me that all of you folks are on the wrong side of whatever's going on in the Tower – and that ain't my fault. A sweeper doesn't ask questions, he does as he's told."

"I don't give a shit what you've been told. You're not getting anywhere near Miss Parker," Sam announced in a deathly calm voice.

"Try and stop me, asshole," Tom replied in an equally determined tone. With a movement that had most of the other sweepers fascinated, he swept his right hand up and under his jacket to pull out his sidearm. Normally, the movement happened faster than anyone would expect and was quite deadly.

But this was a unique situation. In the first place, Tom's hand discovered that the zipper to his jacket hadn't been pulled down far enough – and he had to grope for the opening. Finally and more telling, however, was the fact that Sam simply was faster and more prepared than the average sparring partner. The moment Sam saw the hand begin to move, he lowered his head and rushed the other sweeper. The two big men crashed together, with Sam's momentum temporarily driving the other sweeper back toward the door.

Jarod caught at the arm of a passing nurse. "Call hospital security!" he snapped at her. "A man in there just threatened my friend with a gun, and now they're fighting!"

The young woman scurried off quickly, and Jarod turned to address Ethan – only to find his younger brother halfway into the waiting room. Tom had managed to extricate his sidearm, and only Sam's strength was keeping the arm pointed straight up in the air rather than at his head or heart.

Suddenly Sam knew he had help – someone had joined the struggle and was pounding the other sweeper on the back of the skull with clenched fists. Tom whirled in Sam's hold and threw Ethan a stunning roundhouse blow that knocked the young man to the floor. Sam took the opportunity that the diversion created, however, and wrenched the arm with the gun in hand backwards, against the way joints were supposed to bend.

From out of nowhere, it seemed, a foot kicked at the hand holding the gun and sent the weapon flying across the waiting room – and another set of doubled fists landed on the back of the Centre sweeper's skull, knocking the man to his knees. Sam doubled up his fists and threw two lightening-fast punches – one to the nose and one to the left cheek – that finished the job of putting the would-be assassin on the floor, unconscious.

Sam raised grateful eyes to the person who had been vital to finishing off the threat to Miss Parker – and ended up staring open-mouthed at the elusive, fugitive Pretender that he'd spent years chasing. Jarod was shaking out his fists, and gave Sam a look of pure admiration. "No wonder she keeps you around," he commented and then turned and bent to give Ethan a hand-up.

"What the hell are YOU doing here?" Sam gaped, stunned.

Jarod didn't get a chance to answer immediately, for two uniformed officers darted into the waiting room, obviously prepared to be pulling combatants apart. "The gun's over there," Jarod pointed to a spot near the television and a wastepaper basket. "And this is the man who just attacked my friend there." Jarod's finger pointed at the man on the floor.

"Wolsey over in the ER reported a suspicious-looking man inquiring after the United survivors too," the second cop reminded his partner. "I wonder what his story is going to be – probably some nut case on a mission from God or something…"

The pair of hospital security men rolled Tom onto his stomach and tied his hands behind him with plastic handcuffs – and then they dragged him off between them. "You'll come along to file a complaint - right?" the first officer asked Sam.

"In a minute," Sam told them and then turned to Jarod again, once more in a defensive mode. "Listen, she's in no shape for you to…"

"Since that man was the 'danger' Ethan was worried about, I thought he belonged here with his sister now. Sydney doesn't need guarding anymore." Jarod interrupted the sweeper without hesitation. "And I think you'll agree that having family around right now isn't such a bad idea."

Sam shifted his gaze from Ethan to Jarod. "I need to go file a complaint that will keep that sweeper tied up in knots until long after Miss Parker has been released," he said in a slightly frustrated tone.

"I'll stay here, in case she comes out of surgery," Ethan told the sweeper. "I want to be here when she wakes up."

Jarod didn't flinch under Sam's steady gaze. "I'll call Michelle and Nicholas," he said suddenly. "Sydney needs his family here too. He shouldn't be alone, going through this."

It was in that moment that Sam knew that Jarod wouldn't be sticking around – that this meeting, this assistance given to him and through him to Miss Parker, had been entirely by chance. The sweeper put out his hand. "Thanks, Jarod." When the Pretender merely stared at the outstretched hand, he added, "I mean it. I needed your help right then – and I'm glad you came along. Thanks – from me, and from Miss Parker." He looked Jarod directly in the eye. "I owe you one."

Jarod's hand was warm and strong, just like Sam's. "Take good care of her," the Pretender told the sweeper with a fierce light in his eyes that matched the strength of the grip of his hand.

"I always do," Sam replied confidently and walked away to follow the security men, who were halfway down the long hall by now.

"You're not leaving!" Ethan gaped at his brother. "You just got here!"

"No, I'm not leaving quite yet. I have to get my cell phone back from Carl first, call Sydney's family, and then make arrangements for Carl to get back to Pennsylvania – or California, whichever." Jarod put his hand on his brother's shoulder. "Listen, tell her from me when she wakes up that I said hello, will you?"

"You're not coming back to see her after she's out from under the anesthesia?"

Jarod shook his head. "No. I'd better not. Tell her I'll be in touch, though."

"She's going to be so pissed at you…" Ethan warned.

Jarod chuckled dryly. "When is she ever NOT pissed at me?" he asked as he waved. "You know how to reach me."

Ethan stared after his half-brother, amazed at the echoes of sadness and regret that colored the attempt at humor. Jarod's determination to put and keep distance between himself and these two people who were so important to him in his youth was tearing him apart. It wasn't right. It was time Jarod reconciled himself with Sydney and Miss Parker somehow – because ignoring and walking away from the problem was only going to make matters worse.

oOoOo

Broots dove for his cell phone when it chirped. "Yes? What? Hello?"

"Mr. Broots," Jarod's voice was calm, but there was an amused note in the background at his salutation.

"Jarod! Where are you?"

"At the Ogden hospital. The danger has been defused – if you and Debbie want to come visit after a while, it will be safe." Jarod sounded tired.

"And Miss Parker and Sydney?" Broots' smile had attracted the attention of his daughter.

"Miss Parker is still in surgery, Sydney will be in surgery soon – but they're still alive." Jarod paused. "I just thought you should know."

"Jarod…" Broots began, not exactly knowing how to express what he felt.

"Yeah?"

"Thanks."

There was a moment of silence on the other end of the line. "Stay well, Mr. Broots – and good luck."

Broots pulled the device from his ear when it became obvious that Jarod had disconnected abruptly. "Well, Daddy?" Debbie pressed against her father. "What did he say?"

"He said it was safe again," he repeated in bemusement. "And I think he just said goodbye."

"Are we going to go in to see Miss Parker and Sydney, then?"

The question brought Broots out of his reverie. "You betcha," he answered his daughter and pointed. "Dress warmly – its cold outside."

oOoOo

Erin opened the door to her apartment slowly. Watching a good romance movie hadn't been the best idea – the theme of the movie kept bringing her back to her liaison with Lyle the night before. So she'd walked out of the multiplex and sauntered home, not hurrying at all. Not ever the first flurry of snow in the air could make her feet move any faster.

She turned on the light, dropped her keys on the table and then bent to pick up MacGyver, who immediately turned on the high-volume purr that had so charmed Erin at the pound. "I've been ignoring you, haven't I?" she asked her cat rhetorically and walked into the kitchen of her little apartment, cuddling the cat and petting him. "OK, down you go so I can feed you," she told him and moved to open the fridge door.

Feeding the cat was a rote activity – something that she could do with her eyes closed and her brain in neutral. It didn't detract from her ability to note that there were still two wineglasses in the sink from the night before. She set the dish with the cat food on the floor where MacGyver was used to getting fed and then turned immediately to take care of the lapse.

But putting the glasses in the dish washer didn't stop the flood of memories from washing over her – of Lyle's smile and toast as they had clinked their glasses together, of his setting both glasses on the coffee table when both of them became more interested in each other than in imbibing. She shook her head at the memory of how they had practically made out on the couch before finally heading to the bedroom to shed clothing. She didn't WANT to remember how it had been like making love to a man who acted as if he'd never done such a thing before – she didn't WANT to remember how wanted and cherished he'd made her feel.

There was a bottle of rum in the cabinet above the fridge, and she got it down and poured herself a very liberal helping into the bottom of a water glass that she then finished filling with some orange juice. Cherry was dead – raped and tortured and murdered, possibly at the hands of the same man who had made HER feel like a princess while making love to her! It was like a surreal nightmare come to life.

If only Lyle hadn't been so gracious, funny and such good company. If only he'd had some quirk or odd behavioral trait that had made her wonder about him, however briefly. She searched her memory of their time together, looking to see if he'd given her any clues to a less than savory side of his personality – and gave up when nothing jumped out at her as odd or questionable, until...

That was when she remembered. It had been such a tiny thing that it hadn't even seemed odd at the time. When he'd met her at the Student Union, while she'd been caressing his neck, there had been a tiny drop of blood on his skin. Her eyes widened. At the time, she'd thought that he'd just nicked himself shaving, but now that she was thinking about it, the droplet had been far from anywhere where he'd have been shaving. Where had that drop of blood come from?

The implications had her slamming her glass down on the kitchen table hard enough to slosh some of the orange liquid onto the tabletop. Had that been Cherry's blood she'd so conveniently wiped away? If not, then where had the blood come from? What had he said when she mentioned it? _"Did you get it?"_ Was that the kind of question to be expected from someone who'd cut themselves shaving?

Shaking like a leaf, she walked over to the kitchen counter and dragged out the phone book, looking for the number for the police headquarters. She knew that even if that wasn't the station the detectives who had spoken to her twice came from, a call to headquarters would be relayed until the message arrived where it needed to be. "Hello?" she said when the calm voice of the police switchboard operator came on the line, "I'd like to leave a message for either Detective Lowe or Detective Bridges… no, I don't know which precinct number. Would you have one of them call Erin Patterson as soon as possible?"

When she hung up, she suddenly remembered that her phone lines had been tapped – the likelihood that the message would find the detectives quickly was very high. Maybe letting them listen into her calls hadn't been such a bad idea in the first place. Still shaking, Erin reached for and then slumped into her seat at the kitchen table and took another big gulp of the strong drink.

Now all she had to do was wait.

oOoOo

Lyle poured the steaming stir-fry into a serving bowl and carried it to his table with two hands, as befitting the offering it was. As usual, the amount of meat was greater than the amount of vegetables, but it was a dish that he dearly loved and had always been scrupulous about the proportions. Already on the table was the small rice cooker with a bamboo paddle at the ready, along with his place setting and a delicate arrangement of a daisy and blood-red rose bud.

He seated himself and arranged the rice and half of the stir-fry dish on his plate, and then closed his eyes and gave over a moment in remembrance of the life that had been given in the celebration of his triumphs at the Centre. The first taste of the tender and seasoned meat brought forth the face of the pretty girl just at the moment when she'd realized that she was to be made a sacrifice. The expression in the eyes of his Prey had always been of great interest – and never more so than at the very moment that they realized that the end of their short life-span had been plotted and now approached apace.

This one had been a fighter. At first she had just lain there, taking whatever degradation he'd chosen to deal her, her dark eyes glaring at him malignantly and impotently. Then, as he'd lain beside her after his first shower, she'd deliberately not looked at him – kept her face turned away from him – until that Moment. Finally she'd turned to look at him, and the look in her eye had been exquisite – the brilliance of life facing its own mortality.

Reverently he tucked another long strip of the meat into his mouth and chewed pensively. So much about this latest Hunt had been memorable. He'd had the time to indulge a few fantasies that had been building over the last few Hunts – including experiencing the act of renewal while bathed in blood. In his mind, it had been like being born anew – and his Prey could no longer ignore him or what he was doing. The tears had come, making her face wet with regret and terror. The next bite he took with a small clump of white rice.

Tomorrow would begin his true first day as the Chairman of the Centre, he just knew it. Any chance that his sister had survived that plane crash in Utah should have been snuffed out by then – and he could report to Mr. Orinde, the Triumvirate representative, that there could be only one Parker heir to the Chairmanship. A few hundred thousand dollars here and there could make the police investigation into the car bomb that had killed Mr. Raines disappear into a deep, dark drawer labeled 'Cold Cases' – which is exactly where it belonged.

Another few hundred thousand dollars would need to be spent – through indirect means again, of course – to 'take care of' Mr. Arnham. Friend or not, he had outlived his usefulness both to Lyle and the Centre to the point that his continuing to live threatened Centre security. The same kind of arrangements – this time without the need for the hundreds of thousands of dollars spent – would remove the sweepers who had undertaken the covert termination orders on Miss Parker and her team.

Lyle glanced down and noted that he'd polished off the helping he'd dished for himself in the midst of all his musing – and he'd not even managed to keep his mind on the Prey. For such an important event, he needed to do this right – and he was still hungry. He put half of the remaining stir fry and a little more rice on his plate.

That was something else he'd have to do in the morning – make sure that the proper amount of money was greasing the proper palms to make sure that the file on either the disappearance or murder of that Chinese girl also landed in the 'Cold Case' file. It just wouldn't do to have this Feast tainted by the possibility of a police investigation from getting anywhere near Blue Cove.

He deliberately put the face of his Prey before him as he reverently took bite after bite of his meal. What kind of person had she been otherwise, he wondered – and what had she wanted with Erin that day?

No, he couldn't think of Erin right now – now while he was enjoying this gift of life from his Prey. Erin was a creature of light – where this gift had come about in darkness and pain.

But once the face of the pretty blonde university student had popped up in his mind, she wouldn't be dismissed again. Lyle finally put his chopsticks down and dumped the rest of his stir-fry into the pot from the rice cooker and then into the fridge to keep for leftovers the next evening. His plate and chopsticks rinsed and in the dishwasher, he poured himself a stiff whiskey on top of a single ice cube and repaired to his couch.

Erin – she was what was wrong about this entire Feast. She was the first person completely innocent of everything that had gone into creating the person Lyle was that had caught his eye – his eye and his heart. She was sweet without making that sweetness into a tool for an agenda. What he wouldn't give to be able to share the Feast with someone…

No! The thought was discarded as impossible almost immediately. His world and Erin's could never coexist in such close proximity. There could be no connection between the Centre and the University of Maryland – not where Erin and he were concerned.

And yet…

Her face wouldn't leave him in peace. He slouched on the couch and closed his eyes, finally letting himself relive the previous night's events. Her touch had been intoxicating, and her small cries of pleasure enough to drive him wild. It had been a night unlike any other in his experience – and a night that he didn't want to let rest in isolation.

He opened his eyes and took another very big swig from his whiskey. There was no getting away from the fact that he very much wanted to see her again. There was something so relaxing and liberating about not having to wear a mask of invulnerability or nonchalance – of letting that very secret, inner man who could never be Chairman and exercise any real authority at all have a spot in the sun. And once more he found himself wondering whether he'd ruined everything by climbing from her bed and walking away without a single word of thanks or fondness or even farewell.

There was only one way to find out. Lyle put his whiskey down on the coffee table and walked back into the kitchen. The paper with her telephone number on it had been slipped into his wallet – and he retrieved his cell phone from his jacket pocket and dialed the number, then immediately disconnected the call before she could answer.

What was he doing? She tied him to Baltimore at the time when his Prey went missing. Calling her was running the risk of discovery – it was running the risk of watching what had been true fondness and affection turn into rejection and disgust. He knew those latter two emotions well – they had been the stuff of his latter adolescence. Did he really want to walk that fine a line?

He folded his cell phone and walked over to the fridge, pulling the rice pot out and taking the lid off so he could pinch out another tender slice of meat. Then he began to grin and reached for his phone again. Walking a microscopically thin line would be the ultimate challenge – and he'd be damned if he walked away from a challenge of this magnitude. This time, he didn't disconnect before the call was completed.

"Hello?" Erin's voice sounded soft and shaky – had she been crying.

"It's me," he said gently. "Are you OK?"

There was a pause on the other end of the line. "Lyle!" she exclaimed in surprise. "I didn't expect…"

"Erin, are you OK?" he asked again. "Was it something I did?" He closed his eyes after pinching another slice of meat from the rice pot and slipping it between his lips. "Look, I know I should have awakened you when I had to leave, but…"

"No, it's not that…" Erin seemed to take a dragging deep breath. "One of my best friends was found dead, and they don't know who killed her."

"Really!" Lyle's eyes opened very wide, and he took another piece of meat from the pot. "Do they have any leads?" he asked, chewing carefully.

"No…" Erin's voice got shaky again. "At least, I don't know – they haven't even released her name to the media yet."

"I'm so sorry to hear about your friend," he felt his heart go out to her, knowing all too well the pain of separation and loss. "I just wanted to call and make sure that everything was OK between Us, despite my being a real bastard this morning."

"You had to go to work?" she asked in a small voice.

"I told you last night that I had to be at work first thing in the morning, remember?" he reminded her. "Do you really think I would have left you if it hadn't been important?"

There was a long moment of silence on the other end broken only by what sounded like soft sobs. "Look," Lyle said earnestly, "I can't get away for the next couple of days, but I don't want you going through this alone…"

"I'm not…" she said finally. "I really… I gotta go…"

"I'll call you in a couple of days, to see how you're doing – is that OK?" he asked, his eyes closed and hoping she'd let him know that he hadn't completely burned his bridges.

"Uh… yeah… sure," she said after another long pause. "I'll talk to you later."

"I… you take care," he urged her gently.

"Yeah," she responded, almost as if by remote control. "Bye."

"Bye."

Lyle looked down into the rice pot and popped another piece of meat into his mouth. She was so vulnerable right now – the world could be such a dangerous place for an innocent such as she.

He grinned as he snitched a final slice of meat with a piece of onion and put the top back on the rice pot. At least he knew she wasn't angry with him…

oOoOo

Carl Bennings looked up as his Chief of Security came back into his hospital room and then frowned. "You look as if you have the weight of the world on your shoulders, my friend," he scolded as he picked up the cell phone from the wheeled tray that stretched across his bed and held it out to the Pretender. "Here. Take your phone back and sit down and talk to me."

Jarod sighed when he saw in his friend's emerald eyes a curiosity that he knew from experience wouldn't back down until it was satisfied, and he pocketed his phone and pulled the chair close again. "It's nothing…"

"You might be able to get away with dishing that shit to others who don't know you very well," Bennings shook his head, "but don't think you can get away with it with me."

"It's just that I've run into some people on this trip that I thought I'd left in my past," Jarod admitted obliquely. "I'd just as soon they'd stay there…"

"And who is that?" Bennings' curiosity was truly piqued now – Jarod had been very closed-mouthed about his past except in regard to his bonafides as a security expert. When the chocolate eyes just touched his briefly before looking away again, he sighed. "I'm not giving up – you might as well spill. We can keep it just between us, if you want…"

"Carl…"

"Don't even start, Jarod. We've been friends for years – you know every last skeleton in my closet. I've trusted you with a few secrets that I haven't told another living soul. Don't you think it's about time you see whether or not you can trust me in return?"

Jarod buried his forehead in his hand and then looked up. "I tell you what – I'll tell you when we have you out of here and either on a plane to California or back to Pennsylvania. Will that satisfy you?"

"Yes," Bennings answered after a thoughtful moment, "but only if you answer one question for me."

The Pretender sighed. "What?"

"Do I know them?"

After a moment, Jarod shrugged. "In a manner of speaking, I suppose. Yes."

Bennings' brow furled. "OK," he replied slowly, "I'll be content with that for the time being. Now – about getting me to San Francisco…"

Jarod nodded, grateful that the subject had been changed that easily. "So you still want to go on to California after all?"

"I have that office to open yet, you know," Bennings replied, "and there are a lot of people sitting in jail right now who have done just about everything short of murder to keep me from getting there. I sure would like to disappoint them, wouldn't you?"

"Yeah," Jarod nodded, "especially a couple of guys in Pennsylvania." He rose from his chair. "Let me talk to your doctor about how soon I can spring you, and then I'll be on the horn to Sandy to get me some plane tickets…"

"Uh…" Bennings held up a hand. "Let's drive the rest of the way, shall we?" He let a look of chagrin cover his face. "I don't think I want to look another airplane in the face for a while."

"If you're going to be opening this corporate office on the other side of the country, you're going to have to get used to cross-continental flying," Jarod told him earnestly, "or you're going to be handing over a lot of authority to somebody else again – just like you did to Hendricks…"

"I know what I'm doing," Bennings interrupted. "Go make the arrangements – and figure that I'm stuck here until at least tomorrow morning. That's what the doc in the ER told me he wanted…"

"And visiting hours are just about finished," the nurse who was accompanying the kitchen worker handing out dinners informed the two men. "You can see your friend again in the morning," she pointed out bluntly.

Jarod's brows rose, and then he waved. "Guess that's it for the evening, Carl. See you in the morning."

Jarod walked from Bennings' room on the medical floor to the huge, open and glassed lobby and found a seat near the volunteer's desk. He had three calls to make: first to the FBI, regarding Stoller; secondly to Sandy to get reservations in San Francisco for when they finally got there; and finally to Albany, to let Michelle know that Sydney had been injured.

The last call would be the hardest.

oOoOo

"Visiting hours are from ten in the morning until five in the evening, sir," the nurse said firmly as he put a hand on the shoulder of the man who had been sitting next to Miss Parker's bed ever since she'd been wheeled in from the Recovery Room.

"I'm not a visitor," the big man said softly and without moving a muscle. "I'm here to keep her safe. There's already been one attempt on her life today."

The nurse's eyes got wide. "I'll have to speak to my supervisor…"

"Talk to whomever you want to," Sam replied. "I'm not going anywhere."

The nurse huffed and bustled about for a moment, checking the IV drip regulator and taking note of pulse and blood pressure readings in the chart she was carrying before walking away. Sam settled back into his chair, his eyes trained on Miss Parker's face. It was where he'd been looking since Ethan had left with the Broots' for the motel, and trained on her face was where his gaze would stay until Ethan returned in the morning to take over.

In the room next door, Sydney had also finally been put to bed next to a critically ill George Stoller – but only until a federal agent had arrived on the scene and ordered Stoller moved to a private room. It seemed that Stoller was suspected of being some sort of assassin – Sam didn't stick around to hear much more than that. Sydney's head had been bandaged, and he was wearing a cervical collar. In some ways, he looked far healthier than Miss Parker did now – his color was good, and he didn't have anything packaged in plaster of Paris.

Miss Parker's right arm had been immobilized, and tubes ran from a point beneath her hospital gown on that side that fed antibiotics directly to the wound. Her face was ashen except for the pink in her cheeks that spoke of the fever she still was running. She hadn't moved at all nor made any sound save the small sigh of complaint the last time the nurses had stuck the aural thermometer in her ear.

Sam was bone-tired, his head ached again and his stomach was no longer steady. He'd forgotten the pain medication for his concussion in the motel room, and now he was paying for that lapse. Just a few more minutes, he promised himself, just to see if she was going to wake up – if he could last, then maybe he could stretch the time that way for the rest of the night.

One thing was for sure: he wasn't going to budge from her side except to make a regular check on Sydney.

oOoOo

Erin rose a bit unsteadily and walked slowly over to the door. A quick check through the peephole told her that the men on the other side of the door were safe to allow in, and she disengaged first security chain and a flip-latch before unlocking the deadbolt and letting Detectives Lowe and Bridges into her apartment.

"You OK, Miss Patterson?" Bridges asked, seeing the almost overwhelmed look in the young woman's face.

"Lyle called a while back," she answered. "I hope you got it on tape."

"We did," Lowe answered and smiled at her. "You did very well. We got an ID from the trace – and now we can back-track this guy and see if he was anywhere near Baltimore…"

"I called you earlier – I remembered I saw something that I didn't tell you about," Erin blurted and put a hand out to the wall to steady herself. "Blood."

"Blood?" The detectives looked at each other in alarm. "Where and when?"

"It was on the side of Lyle's neck when he came to pick me up at the Student Union yesterday afternoon," Erin told them, trying to ignore the way her stomach was once more on the warpath. "I think he was glad when I wiped it away…"

"Did this Lyle say where the blood came from?" Lowe was writing frantically in his notebook.

Erin shook her head. "I assumed it was from having nicked himself shaving – and he didn't say or do anything to convince me otherwise. It wasn't until I started to think about the way Cherry died…"

"You did the right thing, Miss Patterson," Bridges put out a friendly hand to her elbow, as if to steady her. "It could be nothing, and it could be important. Now – why don't you point on Detective Lowe's face where it was that you found this drop of blood…"

Erin pushed herself away from the wall and up to Lowe's face. She then pointed to a spot on Lowe's neck, in her mind seeing that tiny droplet again and having it nearly make her ill.

"Interesting," Bridges commented, doing a quick sketch and noting where she'd indicated. "Now – about that call… It sounds as if he may want to see you again."

"You'll tell me before then if you've cleared him, won't you?" She gazed back and forth at the two with wide eyes. "I mean, if you're fairly sure he IS the one…"

"We would never put you in harm's way, Miss Patterson," Lowe reassured her. "You look like you've had a hard day – why don't you lie down and rest. You're safe, as far as we can tell, for the time being…"

"What if he calls me at work – or what if he shows up?" Erin worried at them. "Sometimes he just shows up…"

"From the sounds of it, you have a day or so before he intends to try to see you again – we'll work on getting a tail on you for your protection otherwise before then." Bridger patted her shoulder. "Hang in there."

"I hate this," she muttered to herself after she'd locked her door carefully behind the departing detectives. She walked over to her couch and slumped against one of the overstuffed arms. There was no way in Hell she was going to sleep in her bed tonight.

In fact, she doubted she'd be getting any quality sleep at all.

oOoOo

Phil Carew was pissed. In fact, he was more than pissed, he was apoplectic. After the entire staff of the underground facility had spent nearly an entire afternoon wearing gas masks and respirators, and after over twenty men had spent five hours combing through every known nook and cranny of the Centre sublevel ventilation system, there had been no sign of Angelo. Not an empty Cracker Jacks box, not a pillow or blanket – nothing. It was as if the semi-verbal Centre empath had evaporated into thin air.

And it was going to be his job, as head of Security now that Willy's death had left the post wide open, to report to the new Chairman that carrying out his orders had accomplished nothing. Lyle wasn't known for being a very forgiving individual when it came to lesser Centre employees who consistently disappointed him – and this would make the second big disappointment that could be laid at Phil's door. Suddenly Phil was once more contemplating the downsides to being in that rarified upper stratosphere of Centre hierarchy. The higher a person climbed, the harder the landing when he – or she – fell.

For that matter, there had been not a peep from the Salt Lake City office of the Centre either. Phil was frankly getting anxious on that account – his boss' hold on the Chairmanship depended entirely upon the success of that task. Already Mr. Orinde, Triumvirate watchdog and observer, was getting tired of sorting through budgets and projections and had suggested very bluntly that Mr. Lyle had a report that was due and would be considered late after noon the next day. So much was riding on the good graces of that one Zulu…

And there had been another call from Agent Stein, requesting another interview – not with Lyle, but with him again. Phil had flinched as he'd directed his secretary to make the appointment in the latter afternoon. Hopefully a few fingers could be strategically placed in the dike to prevent the entire edifice from crumbling like a house of cards.

This wasn't what he'd expected when he'd accepted the position as Lyle's personal sweeper and assistant. He frankly wondered that if Willy had had this kind of chaos to put up with, why the former number one sweeper either hadn't grown a head of grey hair during his tenure at the top – or quit.

Then again, considering the reputation of both Mr. Raines and Mr. Lyle, maybe that one was a no-brainer. Either way, it didn't look good for HIM – and he wasn't fool enough to want to stick around when things started to really fall apart. The Centre had pulled him off the streets and bought him a house and a fancy car – but he'd be damned if he went to jail for it.

oOoOo

Miss Parker shifted and then let go a deep breath. She was warm, she was comfortable – well, as comfortable as she could get with a shoulder that felt as if it had been torn to pieces – and she could swear that there was a dim light just on the outside of her eyelids. It took work to get the heavy lids to obey the directive to move upwards, and then time to adjust her eyes to the light level.

She was in a room – not the shattered first class cabin that was one of the last things she could remember clearly – and she was in a comfortable bed rather than draped unceremoniously over a pair of laid-back airliner seats. She sighed again and came just a little more awake so that she could try to move her neck. Amazed that the pain that had essentially kept her immobile before was either gone or completely medicated into submission, she turned her head.

Sam leaned forward in his chair, his blue eyes intense in the dim light. "Relax, Miss P," he said softly. "You're safe."

Her mouth was dry, and it sounded like it. "You aren't just a dream, then."

"No, ma'am." His lips quirked in the beginnings of a smile. "I've been here for quite a while – ever since you got out of surgery."

"How…" she tried to move and then drew in a painful gasp at the stab of pain from her shoulder that made it even through the cloud of medication. "Where's Sydney?" she managed finally.

Sam jerked his thumb over his shoulder. "Next room over," he reported, "still unconscious."

"What about George? He was hurt…"

"He's in a private room, courtesy of federal agents. Seems he was an assassin, sent to kill someone on the plane…" Sam shrugged "I didn't get all the story…"

Miss Parker's mind simply wasn't ready to process the details. "Sorry," she said after her eyelids drooped closed for the second time. "I don't think I can…"

"That's OK," Sam told her gently. He scooted his chair close enough that he could capture her left hand as it lay motionless on the top of the blanket. "Go back to sleep. You need your rest to get better."

She lay still again for a while with her eyes closed, and Sam was about to deposit the hand back onto the blanket and back off again when her mouth worked against its desiccated state. "Don't get any ideas… not going steady or anything like that…"

Sam smiled widely at that. "No, ma'am," he replied with a chuckle. "I don't make those kinds of mistakes."

One eye managed to crack open again. "But you aren't going anywhere…"

"No, ma'am," he answered with a gentle squeeze on the hand in his. "I'm here until morning, and Ethan can take over."

She didn't hear the second part of his answer. All she'd needed was to hear his reassurance that he was going to stay with her – and she dropped off the edge of consciousness into the black nothingness of deep sleep.

oOoOo

Al Douglas was bone-tired and thoroughly traumatized. He'd seen carnage in Vietnam thirty years earlier – and he'd thought that he'd be able to handle what the snow on the mountainside was covering. He was wrong.

It was one thing to see body parts and know that they belonged to men who had been intent on killing him – that they were dead so that he could keep living. It was another thing entirely to see small feet and hands and torsos ripped away and scattered and know that these had been children guilty of nothing more than having gotten on a plane destined to plow into a mountainside. He'd worked stoically, not stopping to think or speak – just as he had in 'Nam – until he'd come across a half-melted Barbie doll clutched in a disembodied hand.

Now he was on the back seat of a snowmobile, heading back down the mountain and the rangers' station for hot chocolate, a hot meal, and an appointment with the NTSA shrink for evaluation. He hadn't intended to stand there blubbering like a rookie – it was just the sight of that doll… The tears welled once more, just thinking about it.

He'd had it. Being a sweeper had been a matter of pride, even if some of the jobs he'd been given over the years were of questionable ethics and even more questionable legality. But this had been an assignment too far – to kill someone who had survived this kind of horror was beyond cruel.

Very briefly he wondered if Tom had had better luck at finishing the assignment than he had – and didn't regret the choices he'd made that day at all. That, of course, meant that his name would most likely land on the next termination order to be issued from the Tower – the kind that put a fair price on the head of a disloyal sweeper.

He wondered if he dared try to get in contact with Miss Parker's sweeper – Atkins, he thought the man's name was. Perhaps sticking around to help guard Miss Parker, IF she still lived, wouldn't be a better idea.

At the moment, however, he'd just be glad to get off the damned mountain – away from little girl's hands clutching Barbie dolls in the snow. It was enough to give a man nightmares.


	15. And Into The Fire

Chapter Fifteen – And Into the Fire

Sydney felt as if he were floating except for the rhythmic stroking of his brow with gentle fingers. He was warm, which was a wonder considering the fact of how cold it was and that he hadn't fed the fire for a while. Maybe Bennings had taken over the task when he'd fallen asleep – he'd have to remember to thank the man later. Strange, though, the pain between his shoulder blades that had literally done him in was now gone – and the headache that had been the worst part of seeing double had abated greatly. Had Parker managed to get some of her migraine medicine into him too now? He wouldn't put it past her…

Still the rhythmic brush of fingertips against his brow continued. Was that Miss Parker? She'd become very protective and almost demonstrative there just before he'd fallen asleep – was this her way of telling him she cared without need for words? It would be nice to think so – it was enticing to think that he was seeing at last the possibility to air at least a little of the love he'd borne for the daughter of his friend and patient Catherine. All he had to do was open his eyes…

It took a moment for his vision to clear – and he was thrilled that he wasn't seeing double anymore. But his pleasure turned to shocked surprise when he finally recognized who was sitting next to him, brushing her fingers across his brow. "M…Mi…"

"I'm here, Sydney," Michelle smiled at him – a wide smile of pure happiness. "I was afraid that you would never wake up again."

"How…" He didn't dare move his head – when last he remembered, he hadn't been able to do more than just roll his eyes without causing himself major agony. "Where…"

"You're in the hospital," she explained, her fingers resuming their gentle stroking of his brow. "They brought you in yesterday morning – you were in surgery most of the afternoon…" Her blue-grey eyes filled with tears. "They tell me they almost lost you once."

"Miss… Parker…" He opened his eyes wide and tried to look around without moving.

"She's next door, Sydney," Michelle soothed. "She was in surgery a long time as well. But her brother says that she'll be fine…"

"Lyle… is here?" Sydney's movements became more purposeful. He tried to maneuver himself up on an elbow – amazed that his left arm was once more following instructions, and even more amazed that the movement wasn't making him nearly black out with pain. But his movements were impeded – he had on a thick, cervical collar that made shoulder movements clumsy.

"Not Lyle, Sydney, Ethan," Michelle very cautiously put her hand on the middle of his chest. "Lie still, my love. You can't move around like that."

Sydney's brows were pulled together in a frown. "How…" His eyes caught and held hers tightly. "Why are you here?"

Michelle ran her fingers through his silver hair. "Jarod called me yesterday and told me what had happened. He wired me the ticket. I traveled all night…"

Again Sydney began to struggle. "Jarod?" he gaped and then called out, "Jarod!" and then shot her a look of desperation. "Where is he?"

"Shhhh…" Michelle shook her head. "He's not here." She smiled sadly when the tired chestnut eyes found her again. "He came for his friend and figured that I would want to be here if I knew about your being on that horrible flight – and by the time I'd gotten here this morning, his friend had checked out of the hospital and they both were gone."

"His friend?" Sydney frowned.

"Someone named Bennings – he was on the plane with you…"

Sydney settled back into his comfortable pillow with a sigh. Bennings had been a friend of Jarod's – and now they both were gone. Once more his former protégé had danced alluringly close and then vanished into the woodwork. Thinking about Jarod not wanting to stick around to at least say hello hurt, however – and Sydney turned his mind deliberately from thinking in that direction. That would be better done when he was alone – when he didn't have to hide the tears and the regret. "I take it," he began in a more reasonable voice and without the struggles, "that I'm not in such great shape."

Michelle began to stroke his brow again. "No, you're not," she admitted. "You have a herniated disk and a crushed vertebrae and a concussion with complications. You're lucky that you didn't end up a quadriplegic – although it came close." She picked up his left hand. "Can you feel this?"

The hand tightened in hers. "Yes," he answered with a smile. "I couldn't there for a while, you know…"

She let out a shaky sigh of relief. "The doctors knew they had relieved some of the pressure on pinched nerves that were the result of your back injury, but they didn't know how much if any of the damage was going to be permanent."

He closed his eyes, suddenly very tired. "I'm sorry, I don't mean to fade out…" he began.

"Don't be," she comforted him, her fingers moving slowly and surely across his brow. "Go back to sleep. You need your rest."

"Jarod…" Sydney murmured as he floated off on the soft cushion of pain medications.

Michelle frowned as she watched him fall back asleep. She'd known that Jarod's leaving would be upsetting to the old psychiatrist who'd raised him – she'd tried to talk the Pretender into staying at least until Sydney regained consciousness.

"_I can't stay," he'd argued gently. "I have to get my friend to where he was going originally – and besides, Sydney has a life that doesn't include me anymore. I don't need to hang around and make him feel guilty for what happened all those years ago anymore."_

"_Do you really hate him that much?" she'd snapped into the telephone._

"_I don't hate him," Jarod had snapped back, stung._

"_Then at least let him know you care enough to be there when he wakes up!"_

"_I wish I could," he told her in a voice filled with sadness. "But I can't. Tell him I'll be in touch, though. I'll call him, one of these days."_

And right now, hearing the desolation in Sydney's voice calling for his former protégé, Michelle would have hogtied Jarod to a chair had he been anywhere close by. It isn't fair, she thought to herself and stroked Sydney's brow again. It was all she could do.

oOoOo

"Can you believe this?" Stan Bridges shook his head in amazement as he put another blue tack right next to the red one that had been stuck in a map of the Eastern seaboard states. "That makes the fourth time this Lyle Parker was in the same city as one of the murdered girls."

"Five," Bill Lowe walked over to him carrying another paper from the fax machine. "There was an industrial convention in Atlantic City in November of 2000, and the Centre was there en force, according to this information from the convention's organizers. Top brass were there to answer questions about their R&D departments – and in this case, that top brass included…"

"Mr. Parker," Bridges pulled another blue tack from the box and put it into the map. "This is getting a little too much to be mere coincidence."

"What do we know about this guy, really?" Lowe sat down at the table and began to sift through the papers that were scattered across it. "Have you seen any school records – a birth certificate – anything?"

Bridges shook his head. "No, and it's been damned odd. It's almost as if this character appeared out of nowhere in about 1994 – we have records of his American-issued visa entering the country from South Africa…"

"The first murder – if it really IS the first murder," Lowe pointed to the first white board, with the pictures of the Asian women, "took place in 1994. This guy enters the country in New York, and three months later, we have a dead girl in New York City."

"You know, I was almost hoping that I'd have to do some serious groveling to apologize to that cute little Patterson girl," Bridges sighed as he sat down across the table from his partner. "But from what we've managed to collect so far, I think we're doing her a huge favor by putting her boyfriend under a microscope."

"Hey, you guys should see this," Cal Jefferson exclaimed after a single knock on the interrogation room door warned of his barging on in. The rookie had been set to looking on the police sites for cold cases that looked anything like their case – from the looks on his face, he'd found something.

"What is it?"

"Seems the guy you two are looking at has been a subject of police interest before." Jefferson flopped a copy of a news article, complete with pictures, down in front of Bridges. "I got to thinking that some of what I was hearing you guys talk about sounded familiar, so I did some digging on my own. Virginia police were looking at someone who looked an awful lot like your suspect for a double murder…"

"Oh my God!" Lowe sighed as he showed the photograph in the news story to his partner. "This is our suspect, all right…"

"Robert Bowman…" Bridges read the caption beneath the photograph. "Same guy?"

"Look at him!" Lowe shoved the picture across the table with the force of frustration. "If it isn't him, then he's got a twin or a doppelganger somewhere doing pretty nasty stuff…"

"Nothing about him missing a thumb," Bridges mentioned after snatching the story and starting to read. "Still…" He gazed at Lowe. "It wouldn't hurt to put in a call to the Virginia State Police and see if we can't get some information on the crimes themselves…"

"Look at the date!" Lowe had come around to peer over Bridges' shoulder at the article and finally noted the date at the top of the page. "That's a full ten years before any of the cases we were looking at…"

"How long has this animal been out there?" Bridges turned and looked over his shoulder at his younger partner. "What have we tripped over here?"

"I found something important?" the young man asked brightly, his dark eyes sparkling with excitement.

"You sure did," Lowe congratulated him. "Keep on digging, Cal. Looks like you have a nose for this end of the investigation."

Jackson grinned and backed out of the interrogation room. Bridges looked back at his partner. "Robert Bowman? An alias, do you think, or the guy's real name?"

"Either way, we need to trace it out," Lowe entered the name into the FBI database. "Let's see what we get this time."

oOoOo

Bennings turned his attention from the scenery that surrounded their car as they approached Elko, Nevada to the man behind the wheel of the little sedan. "OK, Jarod, we're on the way to San Francisco – and you promised to tell me just what the Hell you meant when you said there were people from your past that you thought you'd left in the past, or something like that…"

Jarod sighed. He'd been expecting this question for a while now, and he still hadn't formulated a decent answer to it yet. "It's complicated," he hedged.

"We have several hours in the car for you to uncomplicated it for me," Bennings looked back out the windshield at the empty landscape around him. "Talk to me. Just who are these people that I know in a way?"

"Doctor Sydney Green and Miss Parker," Jarod answered finally, knowing that he might as well give over some substantial information or risk being hounded for the rest of the trip.

"Sydney? You mean the old man from the plane…"

"Yeah." Jarod ran his left hand through his hair nervously. "For longer than I want to think about, I was his protégé – his student. He was my Pygmalion."

Carl gazed evenly at his companion. "And this was a bad thing? Sydney seemed to be a pretty level-headed and wise old bird. And Parker…" He smiled and shook his head in appreciation. "Mmmm-MMM! I'd imagine that under different circumstances, that woman would be magnificent." Jarod withheld comment, mostly because Bennings' assessments of both were spot on – and Bennings was quick to pick up on that. "Neither of them seems like an ogre, Jarod. What gives that you don't want to be around them?"

The Pretender glanced over at his passenger, debating just how much of his past to reveal. "You don't understand…" he began again.

"You're damned right I don't. Explain to me why you don't want to be around them." Bennings wasn't about to let his friend off the hook.

"You may find this hard to believe…" Jarod started after another long pause to try to marshal his thoughts.

"We'll worry about that after I hear your story," Bennings told him with a smile. "Just spit it out, Jarod – considering some of the things you know about me, I seriously doubt that there's much you could tell me that would make me think less of you."

Jarod sighed, and Bennings' eyes narrowed. Whatever it was that Jarod was having such trouble telling, HE thought it was bad enough. "You know that my family lives in Virginia?"

"Yeah. I met your parents once about a year ago, remember?" Bennings could remember the pretty red-haired lady that Jarod had introduced as his mother, and her handsome ex-military husband. "Neat people – you all seem very close."

"They didn't raise me," Jarod told him bluntly. "When I was very small, I was stolen from them."

"By Sydney?" Bennings' eyes were wide with both surprise and disbelief.

"No, not by Sydney," Jarod admitted, "but by the corporation he worked… works… for. It's a place called The Centre – you've heard of it, I know…"

Bennings' brows furled. "It's a think-tank isn't it?"

Jarod shrugged. "That's one of its many disguises, I suppose. Anyway, Sydney was the psychiatrist that was assigned as my trainer. He may not have stolen me, but he raised me knowing that I was locked away in a tiny room every night…"

"You're kidding!"

"I told you that you were going to find this hard to believe," Jarod reminded him with a stoic tone. "For almost thirty years, Sydney was the only person I felt might actually care about me – the only adult, anyway. But he never said or did anything…"

"Oh, c'mon now! Every kid has friends growing up…"

"I did, for a little while, anyway," Jarod agreed. "That's where Miss Parker comes in…"

"She came to work with her father?"

Jarod glanced over at his friend sharply. "What do you know about her father?"

Bennings stared at him. "Sydney's her father – right?"

Jarod chuckled sadly and shook his head. "Not by a long shot. Her father was the head cheese – the Chairman of the Centre. He was too busy with Centre affairs – too busy stealing children and having them perform simulations to discover information that could be sold to the highest bidder to kill and maim and…" He closed his eyes briefly and then opened them to concentrate on his driving. "Sydney was just an employee – someone old man Parker foisted her off on when he was too busy for her."

Bennings simply nodded. "That explains why they're close, and why both of them let the impression that she was his daughter go unchallenged."

Jarod glanced at his friend again. "I'm surprised Miss Parker let it slide – she'd be the one to be protesting the fastest…"

"Nope, she didn't correct me at all – and she had plenty of opportunity."

It was something to consider, and Jarod rolled the fact around in his head for a moment. Parker wasn't correcting Carl when he assumed she was Sydney's daughter. Was she that desperate after finding out that Raines was supposedly her sire that she would let his old mentor adopt her – at least unofficially – in the eyes of a stranger?

"Jarod!" Bennings shook Jarod's shoulder a little. "Don't space out on me, man! I just survived a plane wreck – I don't need to take chances on having the same luck on a car wreck too."

"Sorry." Jarod was appalled. "You see why I'd just as soon these people stayed in my past now…"

"Not really." Bennings thought about all he'd been told. "They still seem like otherwise nice, intelligent people – and they weren't responsible for stealing you…" He blinked. "How long after you were stolen did your family find you again?"

"They didn't," Jarod said bluntly. "I escaped about ten years ago – and I found them eventually." His mouth drew down to a thin, unhappy line. "And Miss Parker and Sydney were part of the team the Centre put together to try to keep me from finding them and bring me back in again."

"What the Hell did the Centre want you for so badly?" Bennings asked heatedly. "It doesn't make sense."

Jarod sighed. "It's because of who I am – what I am."

"A genius, granted…"

He shook his head. "It's more than that. I have a very special anomaly in my genetics that makes it possible for me to become a Pretender…"

"A what?!"

"A Pretender. I can become anyone or anything I want to be – or anyone or anything that Sydney was instructed to tell me to be in order to problem-solve or strategize. I'd be given enough physical clues – props, sights, sounds, smells – to slip into the mind of a person in a situation and either see what happened in the past or predict what that person would do in the future."

Bennings' look of skepticism was back. "And this, to the Centre, was a profitable project?"

"Very." Jarod's voice was bleak. "Profitable enough that they were willing to try some pretty off-the-wall stunts to either get me back or duplicate me." He sighed. "But that really doesn't have anything to do with Sydney or Miss Parker."

"They were part of a recovery team - so you're saying they chased you?"

Jarod nodded. "For nearly six years solid."

"What happened then?"

Jarod looked at his friend. "I'm a genius – I'd been toying with them to get clues to my actual family. When I had everything I needed to do the last of the legwork myself, I took myself out of the game." He glanced at Bennings again. "That was about a year before I started working for you."

Bennings was rubbing his chin. "So you've been hiding from the Centre in my Foundation?"

"Not really," Jarod shook his head. "I'd reclaimed my real last name, but borrowed Sydney's to get the certification I needed to qualify for the job. I wasn't about to get either in such a way that the Centre would be able to trace back to my real family. Besides, the Centre wouldn't have dreamed that I would be employed right out in the open with a firm that they either dealt with or did work for on an on-going basis…"

"So while you worked for me, you hid in plain view – but you were still hiding." Bennings' voice held a note of disappointment.

"At first, perhaps," Jarod admitted uncomfortably. "But you and I became friends – and then I stayed because I like the job, I liked what you were doing, and I liked you. I had a sister who worked in Philly too – and it was like I'd found a normal life that I could call my own. I stopped hiding a long time ago."

"OK, so let me get this straight," Bennings said, shifting in his seat so he was sitting up straighter. "You hate Sydney and Miss Parker because they chased you all over creation…"

"I don't hate them," Jarod complained immediately, as defensive with Bennings as he had been with Michelle on the phone the night before.

Bennings tipped his head. "All right…" he said slowly. "So maybe you want to explain to me why you don't want to be around these people – other than the fact that they keep chasing you…"

"It's… they remind me of things I'd rather forget," Jarod blurted finally, "nightmares I'd rather not have anymore."

"Were they responsible for these things?" Bennings pressed.

"Yes… NO!... Well, in a way…"

The sandy-haired man shook his head. "Stop the car, Jarod."

"What?" Jarod braked hard and pulled to a halt at the side of the highway. "What's wrong?"

"We're going in the wrong direction."

"Say what?" The Pretender stared. "I thought you wanted to get to San Francisco…"

"I do," Bennings admitted. "But I think there's something you need to do first – and you can't do it in San Francisco. We need to go back."

"Why?" Jarod's mouth gaped.

"Because you can't reconcile yourself with your past by running away from it," Bennings said simply. "You don't hate these people – actually, anybody with even half a lick of sense could see that you care a lot for them. But you keep running away from them." He put his hand on Jarod's forearm. "You say this Centre place kept you locked away. That IS the past, I'll admit – but who's the one locking you away out here?"

"I don't understand," Jarod shook his head.

"For as long as you run from them, you'll be in hiding – even if it's out in the open. You'll be locking yourself in a prison of your own making – in your mind, at least – and no doubt blaming them," his finger jerked over his shoulder, "for holding the key and keeping you there. That's not a 'normal' life, and you know it. You want a normal life? Then you face your past – all of it – and you learn to get around it. Anything else leaves you crippled in one way or another. I'd be a damned poor friend if I let you go on this way for long."

Jarod sat there, stewing. What Bennings said made sense – Ethan had tried to tell him roughly the same thing many times over the past few years, only to be dismissed as biased toward his half-sister. He glanced at his friend and found him nodding. "You know I'm right," Bennings told him quietly. "Turn the car around – you need to go back."

"I don't want to go back to the Centre!" Jarod exclaimed with a note of desperation.

"You won't. Not if I'm with you." Bennings stated patiently. "I'm a little bit too high-profile to do away with quietly – especially now that I've survived this damned plane crash. You make your peace and then, when you walk away this time, you can walk away and not feel like you have to keep looking over your shoulder." He sat and watched his friend ponder. "Turn the car around, Jarod. We need to be back in Ogden."

Jarod sighed and then eased the car back out onto the road, heading for the next wide spot where he could make a U-turn.

"Good," Bennings nodded. "And while we're on the way, you can tell me all about being a… what did you call it? Oh yeah… a Pretender."

oOoOo

Miss Parker heaved a deep sigh and slowly opened her eyes. It was morning already – there was muted sunlight coming in through the window not far away. Slowly her eyes focused until she could see clearly the person who sat in the chain next to her, his head back against the wall behind him, resting. It had been a long time since last she'd seen her half-brother – when he'd vanished after saving her from a fiery death.

The time had evidently been used well. Ethan was tanned and fit, his hair no more or less long than it had been before – but he'd filled out some. He wasn't thin and pale and unhealthy-looking anymore. Whoever he'd been with had taken good care of him – and she suspected that any gratitude she had on that score was rightfully owed to Major Charles. At least Ethan had one of his parents.

Slowly she used her good hand to push herself up in bed a little more. On the wheeled table next to her sat a tray with food – breakfast, from the looks of it – that had grown cold over time. Even if she'd been hungry, the juice container had a covering over it that would need more than one hand to remove and she'd never been very good handling a spoon or fork with her left hand.

"Here, I'll help you sit up a bit more," Ethan's voice came at her softly so as not to startle, and he had the control to her bed in his hand and raised her head until she nodded sufficiency. "How are you this morning?"

Her mouth worked for a moment, still quite dry. "Thirsty," she replied, her eyes on the little container of juice on her tray.

"Hang on." Ethan walked around the end of the bed, opened the juice container and slipped a straw into it that had been in a plastic water glass not far away. He brought the juice down to where she could steer the straw into her mouth with her left hand.

She had never tasted anything quite so good as the sweetened apple juice – it refreshed her mouth from feeling and tasting like the Mojave Desert and even managed to awaken her a little more completely. "What are you doing here?" she asked once the juice was completely gone.

Grey eyes so much like her mother's regarded her fondly. "You were hurt – I had to come."

"Where's Sam?"

Ethan smirked. "I told him to hit a drugstore on the way back to the motel and get some pills for his headache. He's been functioning on adrenaline ever since he signed himself out of the Dover hospital."

"What was he in the hospital for?" Miss Parker frowned. Had Sam been hurt, and that was the reason he'd missed their flight?

Ethan shrugged. "You'll have to ask him. All I know is that slogging through the snow to find you and then the fight with the sweeper yesterday didn't do him any good. He looked about the color of driven snow when I got here this morning."

"A fight?" Miss Parker's brows knit. "With what sweeper?"

"The one Lyle sent to kill you and Sydney," Ethan answered without softening the blow. "Evidently Mr. Raines died in a car bombing a few days ago, and Lyle wanted to make sure that he had no obstructions to his assuming the Chairmanship…"

"That bastard…" Miss Parker shifted as if to sit up straighter, only to wilt back into her pillow with a groan and a sigh. "Ethan, you know as well as I do that sweepers work in teams…"

"The sweeper that was up on the mountain with you backed down when Sam faced off with him," Ethan told her with a shake of the head. "He told Sam the termination order was wrong – no code name, no paperwork…"

"Plausible deniability," Miss Parker explained in a brittle tone. "Lyle could disavow any knowledge of how or why I died." She gave a short, dark huff. "I bet he was praying to whatever gods he worships that I'd died in the crash and saved his sweepers any bother…"

Ethan watched his sister's face. "What are you going to do now, then?"

Miss Parker relaxed into her pillow and considered the strange position she was in. A single call to the Triumvirate headquarters would put a serious kink in Lyle's plans for a quick and smooth take-over – and the bastard wouldn't even know what hit him. But did she really want to have the Chairmanship herself? Hadn't she been dreaming of being able to walk away from those darkened hallways once and for all? Was this her chance?

"I need to call Africa," she said finally. "I need to tell them that I'm alive and could use some extra security." She closed her eyes briefly and then opened them. "How's Sydney?"

"I passed Michelle in the hallway a while ago," Ethan told her, "and she said that he was awake for a little bit."

"Michelle's here?" Miss Parker was astonished. "How did she find out so fast?"

"Jarod called her."

Grey met grey solidly, Miss Parker's gaze stunned and Ethan's calm and slightly sad. "Did you say Jarod called her?"

Ethan nodded. "Last night."

"He's here?"

Now Ethan shook his head slowly. "He left this morning with his friend, Bennings."

"Without at least saying a simple 'hello – too bad you're still alive – catch me if you can'?"

Ethan's eyes reflected sympathy. "He didn't think it was a good idea to stick around too much. He said for me to tell you that he'd be in touch…"

"Did he now?" Miss Parker was feeling an odd combination of frustration and relief – relief that whoever it was in that San Francisco asylum, it wasn't her childhood friend; frustration that Jarod couldn't even put aside his disappearing act for one moment.

"I tried to talk him out of leaving," Ethan complained softly.

Her gaze landed on her half-brother gently. "I'm sure you did. But Jarod can have his head up his ass despite all efforts to the contrary, can't he?"

Ethan nodded silently. He'd been right – she was pissed and hurt that Jarod had left without a single word to her. If and when Jarod ever decided to try to set things right, he'd have to deal with the fact that much of the hurt associated with the latter years of his association with Miss Parker would be on his head, not hers.

oOoOo

Lyle sat in his comfortable leather chair, staring out the window at the manicured lawns of the Centre and the ocean beyond with fingers steepled in front of his face thoughtfully. He'd been like this since Phil had left to handle the scheduled meeting with Agent Stein, pondering the mixed bag that had been his morning so far.

The fact that Angelo was nowhere to be found was very disquieting – but not entirely unexpected. Angelo knew the inner workings of the Centre better than any other human being; it stood to reason that if there were a place where he could hide from the effects of gas, he'd know it and be there. When Phil was done talking to the FBI, he had the assignment of going over the files of the dozens of Centre inmates looking for another empath. Having an inside track on the minds of those he would be dealing with as Chairman was going to be essential.

More disturbing was the fact that there still was no word from Salt Lake City on the success of making sure Miss Parker wasn't alive to get in his way. He'd actually called the general manager in the Salt Lake City office himself, only to be informed that the two sweepers – the best the office had on staff, no less – had been dispatched early the morning before and no word had been received from them since then. The news was filled with stories about there being six survivors of the flight – but no names had been released yet, supposedly pending the notification of next of kin of the dead. Well, HE was next of kin, and he hadn't heard anything from United either yet.

There had been a few successes, however. The clerical minion assigned to write the report for the Triumvirate had coughed up an acceptable final draft at last, and the report had been tendered to Mr. Abé's representative's desk first thing that morning. The relative silence from that end of the field he was taking to mean that the report was succinct and filled with enough promise that even Mr. Abé was taking time to read it in full and slowly before finalizing his appointment as Chairman.

Colin Arnham, his friend from Johannesburg who had specialized in bombs for hire, was living his last day. The money necessary to take care of him had already been run through the laundering process and delivered to another friend from Cambodia. He'd paid to have Arnham's body left where it would be easily discovered – and that would take care of the FBI investigation into Mr. Raines' demise.

The money necessary to handle things in Baltimore had also made it through the laundering process, although none of it had been dispersed yet. Evidently the media had caught wind of the killing and was screaming – which would make any bribes to quell investigative efforts automatically suspect, and explosive if word got out. Lyle had toyed with the idea of just offing the cops involved already, before they got any solid information that would lead across state lines to Delaware, but hadn't yet reached that point of desperation. He had a mole in the police department – hopefully he'd be on top of any major developments in the case.

And he'd finalized the terms on three military contracts that would go a long way toward putting the Centre back in the black. All in all, a fairly successful day. Successful enough that he deserved a reward – and there was really only one reward that he wanted more than anything else right now.

He pulled his cell phone from his jacket pocket and dialed.

"Hi, this is Erin's answering machine. She's either at work or school, so you get to talk to me instead. Leave a message, or I'll never be able to tell her that you called. BEEP!"

"Hi," he said softly, "it's me. I was thinking that I'd pick you up tomorrow and take you out to dinner. I worry about you. Call me when you get this, OK?" He rattled off the number to his cell phone and then disconnected.

Folding his hands over his cell phone, he returned to staring out the window. Life at the top of the heap was good – just as he'd always known it would be.

oOoOo

"Hey there!"

Miss Parker's head turned in time to see Broots' smiling face before there was a squeal of delight and Debbie pushed past her father to get to the bedside first. "We were so afraid," the girl told her with wide eyes. "Afraid you were… well…" Debbie swallowed hard. "And then trying to get around the sweepers…"

"Looks like you and your dad managed pretty well," the brunette in the bed smiled back.

"Well, that was Sam," Broots admitted, coming up behind his daughter. "He had the sweepers pegged in New York and had a plan to get past anybody in Salt Lake City by the time we were over the Appalachians." His hazel eyes glowed as if lit from within. "It's good to see you, Miss Parker."

"I can hardly believe I'm saying this, but it's good to see you too, Scooby," Miss Parker replied earnestly. "For a while there, I wondered if I'd ever see anybody again."

"We looked in on you last night, but Sam said you were asleep and not to bother you."

"From what I hear, Sam's been taking good care of me," she nodded. She smiled up at Debbie. "Don't look so spooked, Debbie. Everything's going to be all right…"

"The Centre's chasing all of us now," Broots informed her with a shake of the head. "I don't know about everything being all right again for a while…"

"I've called the Triumvirate," Miss Parker told her loyal tech with a smile. "It turns out that one of the three, Mr. Abé, was already in the States – having stopped at the Centre in the process of checking up on several Triumvirate projects around the country. My call was redirected to him – and it seems that Mr. Lyle filed a report this morning that assumes my death as a given. I was able to confirm that rumors of my death were exaggerated, to say the least."

"Lyle's making that report isn't all that surprising – he sent out sweepers to make sure of it ahead of time," Broots added caustically with more backbone than Miss Parker had seen from him in a long time.

"Well, Mr. Lyle will be having an interesting wake-up call later this afternoon," Miss Parker smiled coldly at him, "and Sam won't have to be standing guard all by himself soon, courtesy of Mr. Abé."

"So we don't have to run anymore?" Debbie sounded as if she was hesitant to be hopeful.

Miss Parker grasped Debbie's hand with hers. "No. We're done running, Debbie." She looked over the girl's shoulder at Broots. "Have you seen Sydney yet?"

Broots shook his head. "We were going to stop by after we finished here."

"They won't let me out of bed yet, or tell me anything about his condition," Miss Parker complained with a frown. "When you see him, tell him we're still on our clean slate." She took in the look of confusion. "He'll understand what I'm talking about. Then you can come back and tell me how he's doing, understand?"

"Y…yes, ma'am," Broots gave a resigned shrug. Why should he have expected that her expectations of him would have changed. Passing incomprehensible messages must be another part of his job description that lurked in the illegible fine print of his contract.

"And when I'm better," she said with a glare of mock anger, "I have a bone to pick with you about passing the flu around without my express permission."

Debbie giggled even as her father blanched. "I'm… sorry, Miss Parker…" he stammered.

"As long as you never give me the flu before I end up in a plane crash again," she warned – and then her lips turned upwards. "Sit down before you fall down, Broots, and tell me what's been going on at the Centre and in the world. I'm not going to bite, you know… I really am very glad to see you."

Broots gave her a wary glance before following instructions. His boss was in a very strange mood – probably courtesy of the pain medication she was on – and he wasn't exactly sure if this was when he should break the news about Jordan to her. No, on second thought, that could wait a while – until she was stronger and less likely to take out her emotions at the news on someone other than HIM.

He could wait until Sydney was in the kind of shape that he could help control the explosion that was destined to follow.

oOoOo

Agent Stein was an unhappy man. Mr. Carew, supposedly Mr. Lyle's right-hand man, had been unable to answer any of his questions – again. The stonewalling from the Centre was becoming downright frustrating. There was a connection – there had to be. Lyle had looked altogether too happy at the results of that car bomb for there NOT to be a connection. Unfortunately, his superiors – and federal law enforcement – required more than a gut instinct to put an obviously guilty man behind bars.

When his phone in his pocket chose that moment to begin chirping at him, therefore, he was even more pissed. He whipped the little device out and stabbed at the connect button without even a glance at the incoming caller. "What?" he demanded in an uncharacteristic display of ire.

"Agent Stein." It was Ken Uribe, the Special Agent in Charge of the Dover field office. "You need to return to the office immediately."

"What's up?" Stein asked, far more conversationally. It just didn't do to piss off one's superior with no good reason other than sharing the misery.

"We just got a call from the DC office, and then a call from a couple of cops from the Baltimore, Maryland PD. Seems we may have your suspect on more than just paying to have his boss blown to smithereens."

"Oh?" Stein halted in his walking toward his car. "Like what?"

"You need to come in," Uribe insisted. "You're going to want to sit down and listen to what these guys have managed to put together. If they're right, you'll be taking on the Delaware end of a very big case."

"Damn it, Ken…"

"How does serial kidnap, rape and murder sit with you?"

Stein gulped and stared. "You think…"

"Like I said," Uribe said a little more forcefully, "you need to get your ass back in here. There's a lot of information to go through, and these cops could use some sort of response from us in the relative near future."

"I'm on my way." Stein disconnected the call and pulled his car keys from his pocket. Did he dare speed? This sounded important enough to warrant taking the chance…

oOoOo

Al Douglas walked slowly into the hospital lobby and found what looked like it would be a comfortable seat not far from the volunteer's desk. He felt completely wrung out after his long session with the NTSA shrink, and the hours spent dozing in his car hadn't helped as much as he'd hoped they would.

No, the only thing he could think of that would help put his world back in order was to make contact with Miss Parker's personal sweeper once more. Sam had played fair with him – he could hope that Sam would continue to play fair with him. Al didn't like the feeling of having been hung out to dry by the Centre itself – and the only way he could think of to make up for that feeling of betrayal was to offer his services to Miss Parker herself.

After all, if the Tower had sent out one team to take care of her, no doubt it would consider sending out another if or when the first team lost contact or reported failure. He had no intention of calling in – but he could imagine Tom doing so, IF Sam had managed to keep him from getting anywhere near Miss Parker or Sydney.

God only knew when Sam would be walking through the lobby again. But Al would be there, and he would present his offer.

He had nothing better to do, after all…


	16. No Escape

Chapter Sixteen – No Escape

Sam climbed from the driver's seat and walked across the hospital parking lot feeling considerably more rested and better than he had that morning. Ethan had been right to send him off to the motel room, and to recommend stopping at a drug store on the way. A healthy dose of Tylenol had put down the headache enough that his sleep had been genuinely restful.

"Excuse me." A man rose next to him as he stalked purposefully into the hospital lobby with full intent to just storm on through to Miss Parker's room.

Sam turned his head – it was the sweeper that he'd forestalled up on the mountain. "What the hell are you doing here?" he glowered at the man.

"I figure that I have two choices," Al said, his gaze not flinching from the intensity of Sam's brilliant blue stare. "I'm either a dead man for failing to execute that termination order up on the mountain, or I cast in my lot with yours and help stand guard for her." His face showed his determination. "I can tell you with of those two options I prefer."

Sam still wasn't convinced. "How do I know that this isn't just another attempt to get close to Miss Parker?" he demanded, ready to spring and pounce at a moment's notice.

"You know that I'm expendable either way," Al reasoned with him. "If I take out Miss Parker, I'm a loose end that could be handled with great convenience and very little trouble. That means that even if I succeed, I'm still probably a dead man. I've seen some of the mercies of the Tower – I really would rather not take any chances. So the way I see it, if I want to live, casting in my lot with you and Miss Parker is really my only choice."

"Give me your sidearm," Sam demanded, thrusting his hand out.

Al looked him in the eye for a long moment and then pulled his pistol from his shoulder holster and deposited it in the other sweeper's big hand. "I have a secondary," he stated with utter calm. "You want that one too?"

Sam's eyes narrowed. This guy could be trying to win points and get closer by appearing completely cooperative and sincere. This was, after all, a Lyle plot device. "Yeah," he said finally, "that one too."

Al put his foot up on the chair he'd been sitting in and pulled the much smaller pistol from an ankle holster and handed it over without hesitation. "You want to frisk me?"

"I'm thinking about it," Sam answered in frustration. Either the guy was on the level, or he was very, VERY good as a cleaner. "Move it. I'll let Miss Parker make the final decision."

Al led the way into the hospital corridor. "Where are we headed?"

"Room 107," Sam answered, still very much on alert. "Just keep going."

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

"What do you want me to do?" Erin asked the detective on the other end of the line.

Lowe glanced at Bridges, who was still on the phone with the FBI. "Call him back," he directed and then closed his eyes and prayed. "Take him up on his offer. Do you think you can go out with him without giving away that you're part of the reason he's being investigated in relation to Miss Fu's death?"

"I don't know," Erin whimpered. "It's still possible that he didn't do anything – right?"

"Its possible, but very unlikely. I'm sorry," Lowe told her apologetically. "And we need a window of time to look into things in Delaware when he wouldn't be likely to know about it. If you don't think you can do it…"

"It would only have to be dinner, right?" Erin demanded. "I wouldn't have to keep him occupied more than just an hour or so, right?"

"If we can get the warrants we want, an hour or so would be just about right." Lowe was watching Bridges' reactions to the conversation with the FBI closely, and then breathed a huge sigh of relief when his partner looked over at him and nodded broadly. The FBI was on board and lining up the warrant to search Mr. Lyle Parker's apartment even now. "Besides, you call him back on your phone line, and we'll know where you are and when you'd be there. We would have you under surveillance the whole time, just in case…"

"In case he tries to do me like he did Cherry?" Erin asked, her voice getting hard. "If he's the guy that killed her, then I want to help put him away for the rest of his life."

"But you can't give away that you're starting to have doubts about him," Lowe warned her quickly. "If we're right about this guy, he's very, VERY dangerous. And smart too. You'll have to behave as if you're just as infatuated with him now as you were the last time you saw him."

"I can do that," Erin said with a sudden rush of determination. "For Cherry – to pay him back for what he did to her."

Lowe nodded. The young woman was a trooper all right – he could only hope to keep her safe while a quick search of Mr. Parker's apartment checked to see if there was anything incriminating that would warrant his arrest. "We'll be in touch as soon as you have your plans made with him, Miss Patterson. Just keep your cool and don't let him know that you've changed in your regard for him."

"I won't," Erin told both the detective and herself firmly. "I'll talk to you later."

Lowe replaced the receiver on the cradle and turned to his partner. "The FBI's going to play ball with us?"

"We keep them in the loop so that they can handle things on the Delaware end. They'll handle the search, in return for giving Baltimore first whack at him if they find anything incriminating." Bridges jerked his nose in the direction of the telephone. "What about our young friend?"

"She's going to return the call and make the date," Lowe informed his partner. "She's scared, but she wants to help put Cherry Fu's murderer away – especially if he turns out to be the man she dated the night after Cherry was killed."

"Just as long as she doesn't end up being his last victim," Bridges worried.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Miss Parker held a finger up as Sam walked into her room and continued to listen very carefully to the voice on the other end of Ethan's cell phone. "Very well – I'll expect you tomorrow afternoon," she told Mr. Abé. "Have a safe journey." She punched the disconnect button and handed the phone back to her brother. "Tomorrow should be interesting." She then gave over her complete attention to Sam and the man who had come into the room in front of him. "Who's this?"

Sam nodded as Al glanced backwards for instructions. "Tell her what you told me," Sam said, giving a vague motion with his hand. "It's her decision – so she needs to know."

Miss Parker could hear the note of wariness in Sam's voice. "Sam, what's going on here?"

"My name is Al Douglas, Miss Parker," Al began. "I don't know if you remember me, but I trained under you when you were still in charge of teaching martial arts at Corporate."

Miss Parker's eyes narrowed. "You do look familiar," she admitted. "What can I do for you?"

Al glanced back at Sam and then took a deep breath. "You could let me work for you – assist Mr. Atkins here in keeping you safe."

Miss Parker shifted in bed and then reached for the remote that ran her bed. She raised the head of the bed so that she had just a little more support as she sat upright. As she came more upright, she studied the face of the man before her. "You're a sweeper – your loyalty is to the Centre, is it not?"

Al winced and then faced her directly. "Twenty-four hours ago, I would have agreed with that one hundred percent. But then my partner and I got sent on a couple of termination orders that weren't kosher – no code name, no paperwork, no pictures. Two days ago, it was just a termination order – two men and a kid – no biggie."

Miss Parker's eyes met Sam's, and the sweeper could see that she wasn't impressed with the nonchalance with which Al was talking about killing Broots and Debbie at least. "So what's different now?"

"The termination order that came in on you and Doctor Green didn't have a code name or paperwork either," he told her, "and was marked 'urgent'. After Mr. Atkins here convinced me not to do anything yesterday morning up on the mountain, I got to thinking. And what I came up with doesn't exactly make a man want to stay loyal, if you know what I mean." He took a small step forward. "I don't want to see my life thrown into the shit can because I followed an improper termination order on one of the top officers of the Centre, Miss Parker. And if I don't want to see my life thrown into the shit can for disloyalty, I figure the only thing I can do is stick it out in your service."

Finally Miss Parker looked up at Sam. "Well?"

Sam shrugged. "He's got a point. No code name and no paperwork gives Lyle plausible deniability with the Triumvirate on both sets of termination orders – and a damned good excuse to go sweeper-hunting the moment his position is secured. On the other hand," he continued, and Al turned to look at him, "he could be playing us – getting close to you so he CAN execute the termination order."

Miss Parker looked over at her brother. "Ethan?"

The young man gazed evenly at the older sweeper. "There's nothing – no danger."

"Give him his firearms back," Miss Parker told Sam, "we can use all the support we can get."

"Yes, ma'am." Sam handed Al back both guns, which were immediately stowed in the appropriate holsters.

"Al." The sweeper's head swept up at the simple utterance. "Nothing personal, but I'd like to speak to Sam alone."

"Yes, ma'am." He pulled down his trouser leg and walked calmly from the room.

She looked over at her brother again. "I'd like to talk to Sam for a minute. You don't mind, do you?"

Ethan shook his head and rose to his feet to walk out.

Sam walked a little closer to her bed. "What?"

"Broots said that you have a concussion?" She narrowed her eyes at him. "What the hell are you doing out of bed?"

Sam didn't flinch beneath the stormy gaze. "I'm making sure you stay safe," he answered calmly, "and doing it the only way I know how."

"How's the head?"

He did manage a chagrined smile. "Better, ma'am. Sleeping helps."

"I don't want you taking unnecessary risks," she cautioned.

"Nothing I've done has been unnecessary, Miss Parker," he returned in a business-like tone.

"If you hurt, I want to know about it."

"Yes, ma'am."

"You have an assistant now," she pointed out very distinctly.

"Yes, ma'am." If her concern on his behalf weren't so obvious, he'd have felt as if he were being disciplined. Although on second thought, he thought to himself, that was exactly what she was doing. "I'm OK, Miss Parker," he reassured her.

She settled back against her pillows. "I'll be getting a visit from Mr. Abé from the Triumvirate tomorrow," she told him. "I want you and Al there. I don't want him to think I'm in a vulnerable position – even though I am."

"Just as long as you save enough of Lyle for me, ma'am," Sam answered slowly and softly. "I owe him one big time."

"We'll both be getting back some of our own from him," she promised him, "one way or the other. That I promise you."

"Yes, ma'am." They exchanged cold smiles.

"Tell Ethan he can come back in – and send Al to keep an eye on Syd's door. I think we're going to get some reinforcements soon, courtesy of Mr. Abé – but until then…"

"Gotcha," Sam nodded. He turned with a smile on his face. She might be down, but she sure as hell wasn't out – and it was good to have his old boss back again.

oOoOo

Jarod sat in the car, staring at the façade of the hospital.

"Sitting here isn't going to accomplish anything," Bennings told him sympathetically. "You have to walk in there, and you have to actually have to talk to them."

"I know," Jarod said softly. "I just…"

"Is this my big, brave Security Chief I see quailing at the idea of having to break down and talk to his mentor and one of his old friends?" Bennings chided sharply. When Jarod turned with a glare, he shrugged. "Just calling it as I see it, my man. Prove me wrong."

Jarod set his mouth in a thin line and climbed from behind the wheel. "You have no idea how hard what you're asking me to do really is," he shot over the roof of the car to where Bennings was climbing out too.

"I have a fair idea," Bennings assured him, "I just know that once you've done it, you'll be glad I sat on you until you did something."

"I don't like not being the one in control of the encounter," Jarod complained as he walked slowly across the asphalt toward the front door of the hospital lobby.

"You'll get over it, I promise," Bennings told him with a hand at his shoulder in case he decided to hesitate again. "Whom do you want to talk to first?"

"Parker," Jarod answered immediately. "I think, anyway…"

"You're going to want privacy to do this," Bennings said.

"Sam will understand," Jarod stated with certainty. "So will Ethan."

"Who are they?"

"Sam is Miss Parker's personal sw… bodyguard," Jarod answered, his eyes focused straight ahead. "Ethan is my half-brother – and Parker's half-brother too."

The hand on Jarod's shoulder tightened and pulled Jarod to a halt. "Wait a minute! You mean to tell me that you and Parker share a half-brother?"

Jarod turned to look at his friend. "Trust me – it's a very long and complicated story that has to do with the Centre trying to make more like me."

Bennings sighed. "You have to admit, this all sounds pretty far fetched."

"You don't know the half of it," Jarod commented and began moving forward again.

Michelle stepped out of Sydney's room for a moment, and then stopped still in utter amazement. "Jarod! I thought…"

"Michelle Stamatis, Carl Bennings," Jarod made the introduction in order to avoid having to explain to Sydney's long-lost love that his friend had twisted his arm to come back and at least speak to his mentor.

"Is Sydney awake?" Bennings asked gently.

"Yes," Michelle answered with a frown.

"We're here - let me talk to him first," Bennings asked Jarod. "Looks like Lady Luck wants you to talk to Sydney."

Jarod shrugged, and Bennings pushed through the hospital room door under Al's watchful eye.

"Why?" Michelle asked again, determined not to be put off this time.

"Because… Carl convinced me that I can't truly be free of the Centre to enjoy my future without dealing with my past." Jarod squirmed beneath her steady gaze.

"You have a wise friend," Michelle commented quietly.

"Who happens to be my boss and sign my paycheck," Jarod admitted wryly. "When he says 'no, no, you need to go back and deal with this,' there isn't a whole lot I can do about it…"

In the hospital room, Sydney rolled slightly to smile at Michelle when she came back, but then froze. "You!" He blinked and then stared as Bennings walked over to his bed. "But… I thought you'd already been released from here."

"I have been," Bennings smiled down at the old man. "But I knew I owed you for having hurt you when I thought we were going to be rescued." He looked at the cervical collar. "And it looks like I did some real damage after all…"

"Don't worry about it," Sydney closed his eyes briefly. "I shouldn't have done half of what I did up there – I probably caused my own problems."

"Still," Bennings shook his head. "I felt that I owed you then, and now I know I have a good way to make amends." He lifted a finger to the man in the bed. "Don't go away. There's someone here to see you." He stuck his head out the door and beckoned to Jarod. "Time for you to make things right," he said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. "I'll make sure you're not interrupted."

Jarod glanced at Michelle, who just smiled. "If not for your sake, then at least for Sydney's," she said softly. "Go on. I'll stay out here with your friend."

Bennings' hand landed warm and supportive on Jarod's shoulder as the Pretender moved past him and through the door. Jarod's eyes were completely on the man in the bed, who was watching the door expectantly. "Hello, Sydney," the Pretender said softly.

The chestnut eyes were wide, and Sydney's mouth gaped. "Jarod?" he whispered and then lifted a hand toward his former protégé. "My God! Jarod! I thought you'd already left."

"I had," Jarod admitted, moving closer and taking his old mentor's hand, "I came back."

Sydney studied the face of his former protégé. Jarod looked fit and well-fed, his face had gained few lines in the years since he'd seen him last except a few laugh lines at the edges of his eyes. "You look well," the psychiatrist stated, feeling a little unsure as to how to allow the conversation to progress past superficialities.

"You, on the other hand, look like you've been put through a ringer," Jarod responded honestly, but with a smile. "I'm glad you managed to get out of that mess alive."

Sydney averted his eyes. "Yes, well…" He looked back up again. "Bennings is your friend?"

"Yes," Jarod replied, choosing not to disclose his more professional affiliation. "I was very worried about him. I didn't even know that you and Miss Parker were involved in that flight until I called Broots when I couldn't reach you…"

Sydney's bruised brows pulled together. "When were you trying to reach me?"

"When Raines died in that car bomb, of course." When Sydney's eyes opened wide and his mouth dropped slightly open to gape, Jarod stared. "You didn't know."

"Raines… is dead?"

Jarod nodded. "And Lyle, it seems, decided you and Miss Parker and Sam and Broots were threats to his being able to move into the Chairman's seat smoothly – and he sent out cleaners to take care of you." He gave Sydney's hand a gentle squeeze and then let go so that he could reach for a chair and sit down. "Sam took care of the one that went up to the crash site – Ethan and I gave a small assist in nailing the one who came here to the hospital."

"And Lyle?"

Jarod shrugged. "That's Miss Parker's end of things. You'll have to ask her."

Sydney looked at Jarod for a long moment without speaking, then: "Why did you come back?"

"Carl Bennings is my boss, and when he decided I should…"

"Unh-uh." The old man moved his head just perceptibly, as much of a negation as he dared. "I know you better than that, Jarod. If you were truly determined not to get any closer, nothing anybody could have said would have convinced you otherwise – boss or no." Jarod looked down at his hands, folded in his lap. Sydney knew that withdrawal well – it was a signal he was on the right track. "I thought so. So why come back?"

"I thought I'd finally escaped," Jarod began at last, his voice soft and his words coming slowly. "I'd finally dropped below the Centre radar – stopped leaving you and Miss Parker convenient little clues – and I'd found my family. I'd done the right thing and gotten legitimate certificates to authorize me to do my job. And I'd stopped having the nightmares. I bought a house, I began to entertain – to live. I wasn't moving every couple of weeks – I was learning what it meant to be in the same place willingly for weeks and months on end. I thought I was free – that I was living a normal life."

"You deserve a normal life," Sydney commented gently. "I'm glad you have that now."

"It was a lie I was telling myself," Jarod replied, looking into his mentor's eyes with a sharp and penetrating gaze. "And all it took was finding out that you and Parker were on that United flight to bring it all back – the nightmares, the wondering whether I'd stayed too long in one place, and…" He fell silent.

"And?"

Jarod rose and walked to the window and looked out over what in spring and summer would have been a very pretty grassed alcove. "I remembered how much there was that I'd never settled – with you, with Parker – and for the first time in years, I found myself wishing I had another chance. Then Ethan came, and he told me that Parker at least was still alive. I had my job to do – to figure out who was trying to kill Carl – but every time I turned around, I ran into the thought of you and Parker up on that mountain."

Sydney continued to watch his former student closely. "That doesn't explain why you turned around and came back once you knew we were safe and you'd walked away again," he pointed out with gentle bluntness.

Jarod's shoulders sagged just a little for a brief moment. "I left because I had a job to do – to get Carl to San Francisco. You're right – you two were safe again. And I had the opportunity to do what I'd always done and just dance away out of the Centre's – your – reach, and I took it. I told myself I could go back to forgetting now again – I could stop wondering…"

"Wondering what?"

Suddenly the old psychiatrist was pinned by a sharp chocolate gaze that gave no quarter. "If things had been different, would you have loved me back then?"

The question went straight to Sydney's heart. Up on the mountain, he and Parker had wiped their slate clean of all the baggage of an entire lifetime that had gone before – all in favor of being able to at least admit a fondness for the other that had been buried and ignored. Was he ready to do the same thing with Jarod?

"If things had been different – if it hadn't been necessary to maintain absolute objectivity both to protect the work and keep from giving others power over the both of us," Sydney stated slowly, "you wouldn't need to be asking the question. Just because I never allowed myself to think about it doesn't mean the feelings weren't there. I cared…"

A deep pain welled up in those bright chocolate eyes. "If you cared after all, then why?"

"Why did I not try to rescue you?" Sydney filled in the rest of the question. Jarod nodded wordlessly. "Because," the Belgian answered, "my reason for being there had to do with more than just you. If I'd tried to rescue you, I'd have left behind others who needed what little protection I could give them – and if I failed, then all of you would have been the ones to suffer."

"You let them take me…"

"I didn't allow ANY of that, Jarod," Sydney snapped tiredly. "It happened when I was gone or in a position where I couldn't prevent it – but I was never a willing part of it, nor did I ever give my permission that you…" He stopped. "You have to understand that I wasn't in control as much as you'd like to think I was. I wish I had been." His chestnut gaze now pierced and held Jarod's. "I would have gotten you all out – you, Parker, Angelo, Kyle, Alex, Damon, all the others – I would have called in the authorities if I thought it would have done any good. I would have given the rest of my life to return you to your families, if that were possible. But I couldn't."

The old man closed his eyes. "At the most, I could have complained more – resisted more – and what would that have ultimately accomplished?" He opened his eyes to glare at his protégé. "You've dealt with the Centre at a distance – you know what they're capable of. You know what they do to those who don't toe the company line. What would you have had me do, Jarod?"

Jarod tore his gaze from Sydney's. These were things he'd tried not to hear, not to understand, for the entire time he'd been free. The thought that his mentor – the man he had believed virtually omnipotent for so long – had been just as powerless as he'd been was hard to swallow. And yet, so many of the revelations of just how much a victim Sydney had been over the years had come at his behest. How could he have missed the connection?

Still, he had one last card to play. "After I got away – one of those times you and I were talking over the phone, I asked you if you'd ever cared. You said…"

"I told you the truth, even though I knew you wouldn't like it," Sydney told him sadly. "It's true that I never allowed myself to consider the possibility. But…" he raised a finger. "Not consciously considering the possibility doesn't negate what the heart did anyway. Do you honestly think that, if I'd not cared, I'd have helped you rescue Gemini? Given you the formula that I'd been giving Angelo so that you could rescue that new Pretender they were trying to steal?"

"That could have been the result of a guilty conscience," Jarod blurted defensively.

Sydney stopped and considered the statement. "In a way, I suppose, you're right. I did feel guilt about not being able to save you, so I did the next best thing. But then again, I was finally in a position where I COULD help – where I'd been unable to do anything for you more than I'd already done. I did keep you out of Raines' hands, after all – you didn't end up a sociopath like Kyle and Damon."

"What about now?" Jarod whispered softly.

"What about now?" Sydney returned.

"Do you still care – or is it too late?"

Sydney's face softened and he once more gave that almost imperceptible shake of the head. "Jarod, Jarod. Haven't you heard a word of what I said – that while I may have SAID nothing, the feelings were there anyway? Do you honestly think that your living the past few years incommunicado would have made me care any less now?"

"I just wanted a father who loved me," Jarod whispered brokenly. "I just wanted you to love me."

"I am not your father, Jarod," Sydney replied gently, "and pretending I was back then would have been a grave disservice to your real father, with whom you deserve a full relationship. By keeping my distance, I tried to make sure you had the emotional space for such a relationship to exist if and when the time came. But that doesn't mean that, in a deep, dark corner of my soul that never got sold to the Centre, I didn't think of you as the son I never had – nor does it mean that I love you any less now than I did when we were working together."

"You care?"

"I care," Sydney confirmed, "and I always have." He lifted his hand toward Jarod. "I have always been very proud of you."

Jarod took the hand and let Sydney pull him down into a very careful hug. He closed his eyes and rested very gently against the chest of the man he still considered as a father – and finally knew the freedom of loving and being loved in return by the one person who had been a constant in his life.

Sydney rubbed Jarod's back in small circles and comforted the man in the way he'd so often wished he'd dared comfort the child. Not all the issues between them were settled – not by a very long shot – but the most important ones, the ones that had prevented any communication at all, hopefully had been dealt with properly. Forgiveness – Jarod's forgiving him and his forgiving himself – could come later, as other issues found their resolution too.

If the result of being in this accident was that his relationships with the two most important people in his life become more supportive and less dysfunctional, then all the pain was worth it.

oOoOo

Erin stared at the phone, trying to steel herself for picking it up and dialing. This had to be one of the hardest things she'd ever done – and she could only pray that the detectives would be able to live up to their promise to have a tail on her by the time this was going down. She sniffled and rubbed her nose with the back of her hand as she thrust the face of her dead friend into the fore of her mind. She was doing this for Cherry. If Lyle was the killer, she was doing this so that the police could prove it.

She sniffed again and reached for the receiver and dialed the number that had been left on her answering machine. It rang only once.

"Hello?"

"Hi." It was the only thing she could manage at the moment.

"Erin?" God, he even sounded concerned – worried. Was it all a lie? "Erin, is that you?"

"I got your message," she said at last. "I don't know if I'd be very good company…"

"I told you, I didn't want you to go through this alone." Lyle repeated. "Will you let me at least take you out to dinner and give you a shoulder to lean on for a while?"

Erin's eyes searched the ceiling tile for wisdom, and then took a deep breath. "OK."

"Do you work tomorrow?" he wanted to know.

"No," she sighed and wiped the tears from her cheek with the back of her unencumbered hand. "I have classes all day."

"What time will you be back home then?"

God, but she didn't want to do this! "About four," she answered. "Why don't you swing by after five – give me a chance to freshen up a bit."

"OK," Lyle said gently. "Don't dress up – we're not going anywhere fancy. Just somewhere so that I know that you're eating properly and where we can have a little privacy."

"I'll see you then," Erin said, hoping to cut the conversation short.

"You take care," Lyle worried at her again. "Goodbye."

Erin hung the phone up with a shaking hand and then walked over to the counter where she'd left her orange juice and rum. She picked up the glass and took several swallows of the stiff drink and then leaned on the counter. When this was over – and if she didn't' get herself in too much trouble – she would go home.

Suddenly Mom and Dad's caution and suspicious nature toward all of her dates in the past had a comforting feel to it. Big city living certainly wasn't all it was cracked up to be.

oOoOo

Bennings could see that the encounter with Sydney had taken its toll on Jarod – his friend's eyes were puffy, as if he'd been crying. "You OK?" he asked in concern.

"I think I need to get a cup of coffee before I go talk to Parker," Jarod said with a note of exhaustion. "I need to regroup a little."

"But don't you feel better for having come back and talked to him?" Bennings insisted on prying as they walked down the corridor together toward the cafeteria.

"Yeah," Jarod nodded slowly. He DID feel better – at least, he didn't feel driven to put miles and months between himself and Sydney. And the weight of fear of rejection had been lifted.

"I'll bet you feel just that much better still once you've talked to your old best friend."

"We'll see," Jarod hedged, putting two dollar bills into a machine and hearing a bottle of spring water tumble into the metal bin below. "Parker and I have a very… difficult… relationship. I have an uncommon knack for pissing her off."

"Uh-huh." Bennings muttered, waiting his turn with the drink machine and choosing a carbonated drink with caffeine in it. "I don't think she's the kind of woman one would want to have pissed off at one."

"No," Jarod chuckled, "especially when she's toting her Smith and Wesson."

Bennings' eyes widened. "Yikes! I knew she'd be formidable – I had no idea she was deadly. Literally, that is…"

"Her heart's in the right spot, even if she doesn't want to admit it," Jarod seated himself at one of the small tables that populated the virtually abandoned room. He threw his head back and closed his eyes. "God! If my sister knew what I was doing…"

"Emily? She doesn't approve of these people?"

Jarod shook his head and slowly straightened up. "Emily despises them – blames them for all the years that we lost."

"I suppose one can't blame her," Bennings commented and then took a long draught from his soda.

Jarod shrugged and tipped his head back so that he could down the rest of his water in one long series of gulps. "She's very protective – of me, of our family."

"She's a formidable woman in her own right," Bennings smiled in memory. "I've been meaning to ask you if she's seeing anybody."

There was a silent pause while Jarod straightened and gave his friend a long and searching look. "Why?"

Bennings smiled. "Pretty lady, lady reporter, independent and cagey – just seems like the kind of woman who wouldn't be intimidated or overwhelmed by a multi-millionaire with a slight crush…"

"You… and my sister?" Jarod's mouth gaped. "Why am I only now hearing of this?"

"Maybe I did it to rest your mind for a moment, so that you can go see Parker a little bit refreshed by the thought that you still have a life that exists beyond these people." Bennings smiled and took another sip of his drink. "I trust that you're not going to be resigning the moment your friends go home…"

Jarod shook his head in disbelief. "I shoulda known…" He rose. "I'd better go see Parker before visiting hours are over…"

"Jarod…" The Pretender turned. "I meant what I said about your sister – but we can discuss that later. I'll make a few calls and get us some rooms while you do what you have to – and take your time in your talk with Miss Parker."

Jarod pointed at him in response and set off down the corridor again. Bennings smiled to himself. Whatever was going on with these strangers who'd become acquaintances only by virtual mutual survival, at least he wasn't losing his best friend. His smile grew. And Emily WAS an interesting woman…

oOoOo

Sam frowned at the soft knock on Miss Parker's door, and he stepped over to pull it open – and then gaped.

"Let me talk to her for a little while," Jarod asked quietly, so that she couldn't tell it was he in the corridor.

Sam eyed the Pretender cautiously. "She's tired," he warned. "Don't make her too upset, OK?"

"You have my word."

The look on Sam's face told Jarod just how much the sweeper trusted his word, but Sam pushed past him and into the corridor, leaving only Miss Parker and Ethan in the room.

"Sam?" Miss Parker asked, suddenly noticing that her sweeper was no longer in the room. Her grey eyes widened as she saw the tall, dark-haired man standing by the door, and then narrowed defensively. "I thought you'd gone – escaped while you had the chance."

"I came back – figured that I at least owed you a quick hello after all this time," Jarod replied in a patently artificial lightness. He glanced at Ethan, who nodded and headed for the door.

"You don't have to go," Miss Parker called him back.

"I think you guys need some privacy," Ethan shook his head and vanished through the door.

Miss Parker gazed at Jarod for a long time. "How come Sam let you in here?"

"I suppose because I helped him take down the sweeper that Lyle sent to kill you," Jarod answered calmly. "He owed me one – this makes us even."

"So…" Her voice turned cold and defensive again. "Are you here to gloat?"

"About what?"

"About your being here to save me in the nick of time, free as a bird to make friends like Carl Bennings and flit from here to there and back again, free to know where our brother is and visit him – while I've been stuck…"

"That's not a joking matter, Parker, and you know it," Jarod sighed. "I'm here to check up on a good friend – make sure she's being treated right and getting better. That's all."

"What? No secrets to dangle in front of my nose today?" she snapped at him.

"Those days are finished, Parker," Jarod replied gently. "Take the visit for what it is – one friend wondering how another is doing."

"We aren't friends, Jarod," she reminded him archly.

"We were once," he stated softly. "Truce, Parker, just for a few minutes. Then I'll be gone again, and you can go back to hating me all you want."

"That's the story of my life," Miss Parker leaned back in her pillows tiredly. "You get to go wherever you want to, and I'm still stuck…"

Jarod's eyes finally grew cold. "If that's how you want to play this, then fine. I've stopped by, asked after you, said hello. Obviously you're in no mood to just relax and talk like a normal human being for a bit, so I'll just move along. I'm sorry I thought that…" He stopped himself. "Forget it. Take care of yourself…"

"Jarod…"

"What?" He took an angry step toward her. "You think I'm going to stick around here so you can verbally abuse me? I have better things to do."

That did it. "You left without so much as a 'how are you', you bastard – you expect me to just forget that?" she shouted at him. "And now you stomp around like a wounded bull because I hurt YOU? Wake up…"

"You OK, Miss Parker?" Sam peered around the edge of the doorway and glared at Jarod, whom he blamed for the sound of raised voices. "You need anything?"

"Get out, Sam," she ordered sharply. "This is something between Jarod and me that's been a long time coming – and I don't want anybody getting in my way." She waited for a moment and added when he refused to budge, "I'll be fine. Just go on – he'll be leaving in a moment."

Sam shot Jarod another icy glare that told the Pretender that he'd be answering to the sweeper for upsetting Miss Parker anyway, and then withdrew.

"Wake up and smell the coffee, Jarod," she repeated herself in a low and deadly voice. "You've done nothing BUT hurt me for years. You feed me tidbits about my mother and have me rolling over and sitting up to beg for more – and then disappear after leaving me with more questions than answers. You call me at two in the morning when I have to be at work at eight and wonder why I'm in a bad mood when I talk to you? You humiliate me in public so that you can escape with a smirk on your face – you vanish for years without so much as a farewell – and now you wonder why I don't greet you with open arms now, thank you so much for deigning to visit poor little me in the hospital?" She glared at him. "It's called 'conditioning,' Jarod – you come at me with a smile and I end up smarting often enough, I get the hint and respond accordingly."

"All I've ever wanted…"

"That's just it," she hissed. "It's always been about what YOU'VE wanted. I play your nice little pre-SIMmed scenario for you, give you the jollies with my expected reactions. To Hell with what I want – to Hell with how it makes me feel to be manipulated and used…"

"You didn't seem to give a damn when it was your father or the Centre manipulating you," Jarod hissed in return. "So obviously it wasn't the aspect of being manipulated that was so bothersome…"

"Of course it was, you idiot!" she shook her head and then groaned as the movement set off echoes of agony in her shoulder. She put up a restraining hand, however, when Jarod dropped the attitude and would have come to her side. "When Daddy manipulated me, it hurt like hell – but I took it because I loved him and wanted him to love me back. You claimed you were my friend, and yet you manipulated me with the same callous attitude that my father did – and it hurt just as bad when you did it as when my father did it. But tell me, Jarod, what kind of friend did it make you to hurt me over and over again without so much as an apology? How dare you condemn what my father did when you were doing it yourself!"

Jarod stared at her, dumbfounded.

"Well, I'm done playing your little games," she said finally, using the remote to lower the head of her bed. "I'm tired, I feel like shit, and I'm not in the mood. So you just go on – pat yourself on the back for being a 'good friend' and coming back to stop by after leaving once already. The thing is, a REAL friend wouldn't have left in the first place." She turned her head away from him toward the wall. "Get out. The Centre won't know you were here – neither Sam nor I will say anything, and I'm sure Sydney would rather die than put you in danger. I assume you've spoken to him already…"

"Yes…"

"Then you've done your good deed, Jarod. You can ride off into the sunset now, white hat sparkling and silver bullets in your gun. Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out."

Jarod stumbled to the chair that Sam had been sitting in and sat down heavily. The stream of anger and pent-up frustration from her had been far more devastating than he'd expected – mostly because every word of it was true, from her perspective. "Why is it we always seem to go out of our way to hurt each other?" he asked after a very long time.

"Because that's the only way we know how to act towards each other anymore," she answered in an equally tired and depleted voice. "Because it's the only way either of us knows to get past the walls the other has built up. It's only after we're both so much in pain we're numb that we can talk properly – like right now." She gave a bitter chuckle. "Syd would have a field day analyzing the two of us, you know… AFTER he got through chewing us both out royally, that is…"

"I didn't come here to fight with you," he said softly, "I didn't come here to gloat; I didn't come here to manipulate you or offer you hints and clues to new questions. I came because you were in my nightmares again after a long time – and I needed to know that you would be OK before I could make myself stop having those nightmares again."

Miss Parker sighed heavily. "And it's all about you and what you want again, isn't it?"

Jarod sighed too. "Fine. Tell me what you want, then," he challenged in a defeated tone. "If you want me to go away and never speak to you again, then that's what I'll do. Just say the word, and I'm out of your life for good. I don't want to hurt you anymore."

She was quiet for a long time. Finally she muttered "Shit," without turning around.

Jarod let out a held breath of relief. "All right - if not that, then what?"

Another long moment of silence passed. "Are you leaving after we finish talking?" she asked, turning back to him finally.

"I don't know," he answered honestly. "It depends on what you want."

"I don't know what I want," she replied eventually.

"Then I don't know what to do other than just leave," Jarod told her sadly. "I promised Carl that I'd get him to San Francisco. He was supposed to be there three days ago. I never make promises I don't keep."

It was amazing how empty she felt, now that she'd told him off the way she'd always wanted to – and how much it hurt to think that he would walk away again with those angry, hurtful words being pretty much the last memory he'd have of her. No – she couldn't have that. "Will you at least stay in touch this time?"

Jarod blinked. "After everything you just said, do you still want me to?" After a long moment, she nodded. "Then I'll be in touch - someday, when it won't hurt either of us anymore," he said softly. "I promise. Get well soon." He pulled the door to the room open. "Goodbye, Miss Parker."

Miss Parker turned away again, and the tears started rolling down her cheeks when she heard the door close softly, leaving her alone.


	17. Stalemate

Chapter Seventeen – Stalemate

Sam slammed Jarod up against the wall, his thick forearm pressed hard into the Pretender's windpipe. "I told you not to upset her!" he growled.

"Sam!" Miss Parker's voice filtered through the closed door. "Let him go!"

Slowly the pressure from the forearms eased, and Jarod could breathe again. He didn't move a muscle until Sam had moved back from him, and then he merely turned and walked slowly down the corridor toward his friend, massaging his neck with a hand. Jarod walked past where Bennings stood gaping and down the corridor toward the lobby, and after a scowl at Sam, Bennings followed.

Sam ran his hands through his hair and took several deep breaths to calm himself again under Al's watchful gaze, and then pushed through the hospital room door. "Miss Parker…"

He halted when he saw that she had her face turned to the wall and her chest was heaving. She was crying – and that bastard Pretender had done it. "I swear I'm going to skin him alive, the next time I see him," he growled impotently.

"No, you won't," she corrected in a broken voice without turning. "I picked the fight with him. This is my fault this time."

Sam swallowed back his automatic ire at yet another instance of the Pretender hurting his boss and stepped closer to the bed. "Is there anything I can do for you?"

Miss Parker shook her head. "Unless you can turn time backwards and let me live the last ten minutes over again, there's not much you can do. Just…" She turned a tear-stained face to him. "…don't go too far away, OK?"

"He hurt you again, damn it," he complained softly, knowing he was stepping over an invisible line but not caring. "Every time he comes near you, he hurts you."

"I gave as good as I got, Sam – let it go." She tried to smile through the tears. "But thanks for being concerned."

Sam heard the veiled warning and nodded as he backed away. "Sure thing, Miss Parker."

Miss Parker closed her eyes so that the wall vanished, wishing that the glimpse of total devotion she'd seen in her sweeper's gaze would vanish as well. She'd always known Sam to be loyal to her, but it had finally sunk in what it meant that he'd signed himself out of a hospital bed and come halfway across the continent to make sure of her safety, with total disregard for his own wellbeing. She had no doubt whatsoever that, if the situation warranted it, he would die for her. She'd known, but she'd never fully appreciated the full implications of that single-minded devotion.

The look in his eyes had told the story, and now she couldn't pretend she didn't know that he loved her – in his own way. It was almost beyond belief – she had done nothing but treat him as a trusted colleague, and in turn had earned that kind of emotion. She would never be able to look at him and think of him only as a piece of Centre-provided muscle again. He deserved better – starting now.

"Talk to me, Sam," she said suddenly, turning back to face him and wiping at her face with her free hand.

"About what, Miss Parker?"

"I don't know, just talk to me," she repeated. "Something inane and meaningless that has nothing to do with the Centre or Jarod or any of the rest of it."

Sam was confused. "I'm not sure I understand, ma'am."

"I don't want to think right now, Sam," she replied with a quick and silent sigh. "Give my mind something completely non sequitor to focus on." She thought for a moment. "I know - tell me about where you grew up."

Sam blinked. Well, he thought to himself wryly, you asked what you could do for her… "You know I'm from Los Angeles…" he began, pulling the chair a little closer to the bed and sitting down.

oOoOo

Carl Bennings folded the rest of the clothing he'd worn the day before into the overnight bag that Jarod had brought for him and then walked over to the connecting door between the two rooms to knock. Jarod had been particularly uncommunicative since his clash with Miss Parker's sweeper outside her hospital room, quietly refusing to disclose anything about what had gone on before to set the big man off like that. Their dinner had been almost uncomfortably silent with conversation limited to nearly monosyllabic responses, and each had repaired to his own room to sleep without much more than a grunt and a nod to the other.

Jarod opened the door quietly and walked through bearing his own overnight case. "I'm ready," he stated in a low voice. "Let's go."

"Hey!" Bennings put a hand on Jarod's arm to detain him. Jarod's face was bleak and pale, and he looked as if he hadn't slept a wink all night. "Not like this. You're a wreck…"

"I told you that what you asked of me was hard," the Pretender shrugged off the hand on his arm, "and that Parker and I didn't exactly always get along."

"I thought you were going to talk to her – make things right…"

Jarod could hear the word of accusation ringing in his mind all over again. "I don't know that there's a way to make things right between us," he replied with a grimace. "Too much water has gone under the bridge, more likely."

"So that big guy nearly took your head off because you argued with her?" Bennings frowned. "That isn't like you…"

"It was more a case of she argued with me – although I got a couple of decent shots in myself after a while," Jarod admitted. "Sam was pissed because he warned me not to upset her. He just didn't know that just seeing my face upset her – I didn't have to DO anything."

Bennings crossed his arms over his chest. "And you're going to leave it at that?"

"Yeah," Jarod said flatly. "By mutual agreement, I'll get in touch with her when neither of us is emotionally… vulnerable. Besides, I need to get you to San Francisco one of these years."

"You look like shit, my friend – you didn't sleep, did you?"

"Don't let it worry you. I've done without a whole lot more sleep than this more often than I want to remember, and I'll be fine." Jarod sounded as if he were more trying to convince himself than convince Bennings. "Trust me."

"Just do me a favor," Bennings stated as he picked up his overnight bag. "Don't let it stay this way for long. Let things settle – maybe until we get back to Philly – and then call her."

"When we get back, I'll call Sydney," Jarod told him. "He'll know when it would be safe for me to try again – and no doubt he'll be talking to her in the meantime." He pointed over to a coffee shop across the street from the motel. "Let's get some breakfast and get on the road. I'm sure you have some very anxious trustees by now."

Bennings reluctantly let Jarod lead the way to the car. He'd done his best to help his friend make amends with his past – the next moves would have to Jarod's alone.

oOoOo

"We have a problem," Phil stated urgently as he burst through the etched glass doors without knocking. "Mr. Orinde…"

"You know, my sister used to walk into my office without knocking," Lyle stated in a slightly reminiscing way, "and it used to piss me off something fierce. From her, of course, it was deliberate disrespect – she did it BECAUSE she knew it pissed me off. One of the things I've always enjoyed about sweepers was that they knew their place." The last few words were uttered with an increasingly hard and cold tone. Lyle looked up and glared.

Phil was tired of the grandstanding. "Mr. Lyle, Mr. Orinde is gone," he announced urgently.

Lyle's face lost the glare as the surprise set in. "Gone? As in…"

"As in when the limo showed up at the hotel in Dover to bring him to the Centre this morning, the driver was informed that the African delegation had checked out over an hour earlier and had taken cabs to the airport."

"Damn!" Lyle sprang from his seat and began to pace behind the desk. "They haven't confirmed me in my position yet – this isn't good. Something must be wrong."

"What do you want me to do?" Phil asked, glad that Lyle was now focusing on the problem at hand, rather than pondering ways to kill the messenger.

Lyle paced and thought for a while. "Anything from Salt Lake City?"

"No, sir."

"Shit!" He paced some more and then forced himself to sit back down. "OK. We're going to conduct business as usual – jumping the gun where the Triumvirate is concerned never does anybody any good. Make sure you get things in order in Baltimore…"

"What is it with Baltimore, sir?" Phil asked, his curiosity finally getting the best of him. "I mean, why has the Centre ever shut down a murder investigation it didn't have a direct…" He stared, and Lyle raised his gaze to stare back with a flat expression. "Oh."

"Just get it done," Lyle said softly. "Quietly, through fourth and fifth parties, if necessary, but get it done! Any luck on finding another empath?"

Phil shook his head. "The records show that there were two – Angelo and a woman named Claire – but Claire died about three years ago during an experiment…"

"Shit! That bald demon just couldn't leave well enough alone, could he?" Lyle muttered to himself. "OK. Keep up the pressure to find Angelo – he's got to be here in the Centre somewhere." He gazed at Phil, who stood there in shock. "Don't just stand there like a statue, Get To It!"

Phil shot an unreadable glance over his shoulder at his boss as he walked toward the door. Lyle didn't bother to try to penetrate his sweeper's thinking. His entire evening was in jeopardy – he had intended to take Erin out to celebrate his promotion as much as to comfort her for the loss of her friend. By rights, with the African delegation gone without a decision rendered, he needed to stay close to the Centre, to keep an eye on things and respond if circumstances started to brew out of control.

Briefly he thought about calling and canceling his evening with Erin – and then discarded the idea. No, by God! He wasn't going to let those damned Africans control every aspect of his life the way Raines had attempted to do! He punched a determined finger into the intercom button. "Sung-Li? Cancel all my appointments after two and have the Centre jet ready to depart at three."

"Yes, sir. Where shall I say is the destination for your flight?" the crisp, musical accent of his secretary came back to him immediately.

"Baltimore," he replied with a smile. "I have business there that just can't wait."

oOoOo

"You have a visitor," Michelle announced as she pushed through the door to Miss Parker's room – and then held it open so that Sydney could walk slowly through.

"Syd!" Miss Parker grimaced as she sat up straighter and reached for the controls of her bed.

Sam, who had been sitting in the chair next to her, quickly abandoned his seat so that the older man could rest in it once he'd gotten closer. Michelle touched the sweeper's arm. "Let's let them talk privately," she said, motioning with her head toward the door. Sam's gaze touched his boss', and she nodded agreement.

Sydney's steps were slow as he walked the short distance between the door and Miss Parker's bedside, keeping a hand on the nearby wall for balance. That same hand was warm when he reached out a grasped hers – and he then moved close enough to run the back of his fingers against her cheek. "Your fever's down, thank God," he commented, letting the fingers remain just long enough that the gesture of medical concern could transform into a gentle caress.

"Lucky you, you're back on your feet," she said wryly. "They won't let me do anything except trips to the bathroom yet."

"You were the worse injured," he reminded her in a soft and accented voice. "And you had an infection that I had no way to control up there. As for me, I'm all bundled up in a back brace and this cervical collar – I have to turn around just to turn my head!" He had to turn, to illustrate the point, to see where the chair was that Sam had left unoccupied – and then turn again to back into it to sit down, his movements still very slow and careful.

"I'm so glad you decided to stop by – I've been worried about you," she told him with a gentle smile. "Oh, and did Sam tell you the news about Raines?"

Sydney's shake of the head was only barely perceptible. "Jarod told me about it yesterday," he said, then watched when Miss Parker's face clouded over. "He said he was going to look in on you too…"

"He did," she confirmed, averting her eyes. "He left not long after – he said he'd promised to get Carl Bennings to San Francisco. THAT lucky stiff has already been released."

"Parker…" Sydney began cautiously, "what are you not telling me?"

"Nothing," she insisted, groping for the façade she inevitably wore when her emotions were just too raw to be dealt with directly. She pasted on a smile. "I see Michelle is here."

"Yes," Sydney decided to let the matter slip for the time being and then smiled softly at the thought of the woman he loved being back in his life just a little bit. "She came the minute she heard – and considering the hassle it takes to get me into this back brace contraption, I'm hoping I can talk her into coming back to Blue Cove for a little while at least."

"You did hear what Lyle tried, didn't you?"

"Jarod filled me in on all the main points – specifically that Lyle pushed through some termination orders on us that didn't quite work out as planned," Sydney nodded, and then gazed at her. "Is there more?"

"I called the Triumvirate today and found out that Lyle had written a prospectus report for his assuming the Chairmanship at the Centre that took my – our – deaths as a given. Sometime today, I'll be getting a visit from Mr. Abé himself to discuss the issue."

Sydney shook his head. "That should rattle Lyle's little dream."

Her answering smile was cold. "That's the main idea. Lyle should know better than to assume when it comes to me." But suddenly, her face cleared and she looked at him with almost hesitancy in her eyes. "Sydney, I wanted to talk to you about something important…"

"What is that?" He bent forward as best he could.

"About what we talked about… up there…"

"Yes?"

"That's still…" She swallowed hard. Putting her emotions out in the open had always been difficult – making herself vulnerable to anyone since her mother's death had been a recipe for disaster. And yet… "We're still working on that fresh page – between just us – aren't we?"

Sydney carefully scooted his chair much closer to the side of the hospital bed. "I told you… up there… that as far as I was concerned, we'd already wiped the slate clean and started over." He caught her left hand in his. "I meant what I said – and I wouldn't go back on that, even if I could."

"I mean, I just…" This was so hard!

"Parker…" Sydney's hand tightened on hers so that she couldn't pull away. "What's wrong?" Why would she be acting this way? She wasn't normally this clingy… "What happened with Jarod?" he asked, guessing at the cause of her out of character behavior.

She glanced at him, her face struggling for that imperious façade again but failing miserably. "We argued, of course,"

"Uh-huh." Sydney doubted that it had been one of their normal arguments – there wasn't much of anything that Jarod had to disclose to Miss Parker that she didn't already know, and even less reason for him to be taunting her or attempting to prick her conscience. "And what else?"

"Isn't that enough?"

"To have you suffering from a fear of abandonment again, frankly, no." He held on tightly again as she tried to extricate her hand. "Listen to me, cheri. We became family on that mountain – you aren't saying you want to forget…?"

"No!" The hand in his turned and clung. "I was just afraid that, now that we were safe, you'd tell me you were just trying to keep me calm…"

Sydney wished that his movement wasn't so restricted, or that the brace he was wearing didn't make it seem as if he were wearing a plastic tortoise shell. Without loosening his grip on her hand, he rose carefully from his chair and moved to perch precariously on the edge of her bed. In doing so, he pulled her hand so that it lay against his chest, close to his heart. "I didn't say to you what I did simply to calm you. I meant every word. You are the daughter I never had – and I mean to hold you to your wish to start over."

Miss Parker looked at his face for a long time, and then tipped forward into his arms. "I just need…" she sighed, unable to complete the sentence.

Sydney's arms closed around her. "I'm here, Parker," he soothed into her hair. "And I'm not going anywhere."

Her left arm slipped around him, not caring that he felt as if he were encased in hard plastic. Not since Tommy died had she felt so cherished – safe. "I'm going to hold you to that," she quipped with a hitch in her voice.

Sydney closed his eyes and let himself enjoy the fact that he was holding the woman he'd always thought of as a daughter and comforting her the way he'd always wished she would allow. "Be my guest," he murmured and kissed the top of her forehead. "Knock yourself out."

Miss Parker smiled. This was at least one good thing to come from an absolutely terrifying and agonizing crisis in her life.

oOoOo

Agent Stein watched with a triumphant expression as Lyle unknowingly walked away from him across the tarmac toward the black jet belonging to the Centre. He nodded as he listened to the voice in his ear. "Yes, sir, he's getting on the jet as we speak. I have two men waiting outside his apartment building for the word to execute the search warrant…" He nodded again. "Yes, sir. Right away."

He pulled the cell phone from his ear and used speed dial to reach another number immediately. "Move in," he ordered brusquely.

oOoOo

Sam carefully kept his face composed in an expression of strict neutrality, but couldn't help the inward chuckle at the appearance of a visit from a head of state. Mr. Abé, nominal head of the Triumvirate, came into the small, private hospital room with a contingent of two bodyguards who ranged themselves against the back wall by the door of the rest room. Sam and Al were on either side of Miss Parker's bed. It was ridiculous that in a room the size of a large postage stamp, there were more bodyguards than principles – and neither of the principles looked in any shape to do anybody any harm at all.

"Miss Parker," Mr. Abé intoned with a very polite bow. "We are gratified to see that you are feeling better."

Miss Parker's grey eyes showed neither fear nor submission. "Since my brother not only has me written out of the game entirely, but sent along men to make sure I didn't suddenly resurrect, I'm not surprised."

Mr. Abé moved into the chair next to the bed. "He moved against you?"

Miss Parker's hand waved. "This is Al Douglas, one of two cleaners Lyle had dispatched from the Salt Lake City office to make sure that I didn't survive to come down from the mountain."

The steel-grey head nodded slowly. "That does change the dynamics of the situation considerably. For one thing, it calls into question the dependability of anything that Mr. Lyle might try to claim in future."

"I'm sure the Triumvirate is very aware of Lyle's dependability," Miss Parker deadpanned grimly. "He did spend quite a bit of time training with your organization."

"Be that as it may," Mr. Abé waved a graceful hand to brush aside uncomfortable truths, "we have come to hear from you what your intentions would be if you were appointed as the new Chairman."

Miss Parker's storm-grey gaze bored a hole in the ebony gaze of the older African. "Then I'll make it simple for you. I have no intention of vying for the Chairmanship. Keep the job – I don't want it."

"Are you saying that you're willing to step aside and let your brother's application for the job take precedence?"

"I'm saying I'm through with the Centre," she announced quietly. "I have lived my entire life in that place – and I've watched it eat people alive. I find that now that I'm just barely a survivor, I value my life even more than before – and I don't want to waste it inside Tower walls. I want out – and I want guarantees that I can get out someway other than in a box."

"Frankly, Miss Parker," Mr. Abé squirmed in his chair, "we are not pleased with the idea of Mr. Lyle as Chairman. Are you sure that you wouldn't consider…"

"You dealt just fine with Mr. Raines as Chairman," she reminded him sharply, "and he was a monster."

"We were preparing to remove Mr. Raines from his position when he met his untimely demise," the African announced calmly. "The Centre's profitability has suffered greatly during his tenure – we were hoping that with a less draconian hand at the helm, you could restore much of the lost prestige and earning power…"

"It's very easy for you to say that now," Miss Parker shook her head carefully and winced when the movement made her shoulder ache. "I'm sure you're aware that Mr. Parker's and Mr. Raines' leadership of the Centre was questionable on a number of fronts, not just profitability. The Centre has frankly outlived itself, Mr. Abé – for a very long time now, it has been eating away at itself from the inside out. The time has come for it to be put out of its misery."

"How so?" Mr. Abé folded his hands.

"The Centre needs to close and all its assets to be absorbed into the greater Triumvirate organization. It will take time to make all the arrangements necessary for the corporate organ to cease to exist – and that would be the only thing I'd be willing to do for either the Centre or the Triumvirate. I will preside over shutting the Centre down, but I will not be responsible for keeping it running."

"Your brother disagrees," Mr. Abé told her calmly. "He foresees a return to profitability with a turning away from the failed Prodigy and Pretender projects and a renewed focus on more traditional forms of research."

"My brother would run the Centre into the ground," Miss Parker snarled, "and will take down anyone and anything remotely associated with him. He sees the Centre as a personal power tool and limitless bank account with which to fund his various 'diversions.'" She watched Mr. Abé's face wrinkle in disgust. "That you know what I mean tells me you know that what I'm telling you is the truth."

"And the Centre cannot exist without a Parker running it," Mr. Abé mused aloud, and then looked at her. "That is one of the conditions of the supportive relationship the Triumvirate has had with the Centre all along. If no Parker is willing or suitable to take the job, then the Centre must close."

"So you agree with me that the Centre should be closed?" Miss Parker didn't dare believe that it had been that easy to convince the wily old African to give up a major US cash cow.

"We are intrigued by your vision of the future – and we would want a report from you predicting the way in which you would attempt to salvage as much of our investment as possible while shutting the Centre down."

Miss Parker shook her head. "So much of what I would be basing any prediction on is information that I was never allowed access to. Frankly, a report would be a waste of my time and yours. Either you want to keep the Centre open, in which case you will accept whatever bilge Lyle wants to feed you – or you can see the same handwriting on the wall that I do, in which case you'll let me try to make extracting your investment as painless as possible."

Mr. Abé narrowed his eyes. "You don't seem willing to leave many alternatives."

"There aren't all that many alternatives in this situation," she insisted. "Besides, I can't see where closing the Centre isn't in the Triumvirate's best interests anyway – for as long as I can remember, your associates have been trying to gain an upper hand at the Centre…"

"The Centre has contacts and influence in areas that we do not," Mr. Abé informed her with simple frankness. "Part of the reason that we don't necessarily want to see the Centre close is that we don't want to lose those contacts and a way to exert influence…"

"I can almost guarantee you that you're going to lose them one way or the other," Miss Parker was adamant. "Lyle's use of contacts and influence will be mostly to try to buy his sorry ass out of one jam or another – he has no appreciation for the kind of research that the Centre COULD be involved in that would be profitable and influence-stretching. He's been walking on the unsavory side of the street too long."

Her finger pointed into the blanket on her thigh to illustrate her point. "What's more, the Triumvirate has been too supportive of the Centre's less than ethical projects and techniques – all in the name of pure profit. Under Lyle's aegis, you could expect the nature of the work done here to slip even further – and eventually you will have to consider the question of how long the American government will allow such perversions to be committed at taxpayer expense before it begins to balk. Once you lose the blessing of government contracts, it won't take long until the public sector begins to grow wary."

"The Centre has always been able to deliver the bottom line on its project contracts, has it not?" Mr. Abé asked, concerned.

"Up until now, yes – but only because Mr. Raines, monster that he was, didn't shirk on the idea of living up to the terms of a contract. I can guarantee you that Lyle won't have such scruples."

Mr. Abé rose. "We will have to think about your offer. We will be back to you with our decision by the end of the day tomorrow – I will need to confer with my associates back in Nairobi before I can finish deliberations." He put out his hand. "My sincere wishes for a speedy recovery, Miss Parker."

"Thank you for coming," Miss Parker nodded at her visitor, and then watched with an unreadable expression as the bodyguards waited for their boss to walk ahead of them and finally leave the three Centre employees alone in the room.

"Close the Centre?" Sam asked quietly after all three of them had taken a deep breath to relax.

"Sorry about that," Miss Parker let herself fall back into her pillows and then reached for the control to her bed. "It was bound to happen sooner or later, and it's better that it happen on our terms than on someone else's." She glanced over at Al. "I'm really very tired. Why don't you both go take a break and have some dinner? I don't think I'll need guards this evening…"

Sam nodded and then jerked his head, ordering Al from the room. "You going to be all right, Miss Parker?"

"If Mr. Abé takes my offer, I will be," she said with another sigh. "Tell Al that he's off duty until the morning, and I want you to go back to the motel and get a good night's sleep too. I'm hoping to talk my doctors into letting me out of this prison tomorrow or the next day, so I want you in good shape – because I'm not going to be."

Sam wasn't quite sure her getting herself released from the hospital already was a good idea, but he knew better than to argue with her. "Yes, ma'am."

oOoOo

Agent Stein showed his badge to the officer standing guard at Lyle's apartment door and then moved through. "C'mon, you guys! They'd really like to move on this guy tonight, before he comes back…" he urged the several plainclothes officers taking Lyle's apartment apart piece by piece with latex gloves. "Haven't you found anything yet?"

"Well, we have some possibilities," one officer announced from the kitchen area. He walked into the living area – where the forensics officer had a small testing area set up – carrying a baggie. "Tell me I'm wrong, but doesn't that look like blood or meat juices?"

"We'll see," the forensics officer told him and took charge of the baggie. She took a swab from a sterile package and wiped it through the interior of the bag, and then took a small bottle of liquid from her test kit and let a drop land on the swab. When the swab turned brilliant red, she nodded. "It's blood all right…"

"But is it human?" Stein asked anxiously. "The killer took a very sizeable hunk of Miss Fu with him when he left – we're nowhere if we can't prove the blood's human."

"Hold onto your panties," the forensics officer quipped and then swabbed the inside of the bag once more. This time, she deposited the material into a small cylindrical testing tube and added another chemical to the sample. She closed the top over the cylinder and shook it vigorously for a moment, and then turned the cylinder on its side to look at the display. "We have a plus," she announced with a triumphant yet dark smile. "That means the blood's human."

"Damn!" The officer blanched. "What do you suppose he did with…" Then he blanched just a little more. "Oh shit!"

"What?" The officer's extreme reaction had Stein moving to follow him into Lyle's austere and yet very utilitarian kitchen.

The officer opened the stainless steel refrigerator door and pulled out a pot with a lid on it. He opened it, and swallowed hard at the pleasant and savory aroma that began to escape. "How do we test THIS?" he asked, thrusting the pot under Stein's nose and showing him that there were several pieces of cooked meat nestled against the remains of cooked white rice.

"Sheila!" Stein bellowed and carried the pot in to the forensics officer. "What about this?"

The woman looked into the pot and shook her head. "That will take a little more time, and need the lab."

"Hey, Stein! I think we got him!"

Another officer came into the living area with a black bag that he opened in front of his boss. "Here," he said to the forensics officer, handing her a shining stainless steel scalpel. "Test this."

Sheila took the scalpel gingerly and reached into her kit for a spray bottle. The luminal spread across the surgical instrument and glowed blue. "We have blood," she announced and then swabbed one of the bluish blotches. Another test cylinder was brought out of her kit and had the sample from the scalpel added to it. Again the test chemical was added and the tube shaken vigorously. "It's human!"

"That's it!" Stein crowed and hauled out his cell phone. "We can at least arrest him on suspicion of murder – that will give us the time to finish the rest of the forensics and DNA tests."

oOoOo

Erin took another bite of her seafood salad, wishing that she weren't so nervous that she could hardly taste it. Her stomach was in knots from the thought of the miniature microphone that had been hidden beneath the bulky sweater she was wearing, worried that Lyle somehow would be able to see or detect it. She'd been grateful that there had been no wires or tape recorder taped to her body, like she'd seen far too many times on TV – the range of the microphone was great enough that the officers sitting outside the restaurant would be able to hear ever word said.

"How's your salad?" Lyle asked, taking a sip from his white wine. "You're very quiet."

"I told you that I wasn't going to be very good company," Erin reminded him. "The salad's fine – I'm just not very hungry."

"You can't stop eating over this," he shook his head at her. "You'll make yourself sick…"

"She was my best friend," Erin cried softly, battling tears. "The idea that she was killed already HAS made me sick…"

"OK, OK," Lyle soothed, reaching out and patting her hand on the table very gently. "I know how you feel…"

"How the hell would you know…"

"My best friend was murdered too, when I was in high school," Lyle told her in a very matter of fact voice. "My foster father went to prison for it." There was no reason to tell her that his best friend had died at HIS hand in order to be mistaken for HIM so that HE could escape the prison that was his foster home.

Erin stared. "That's awful!" she blurted, stunned. "How did…"

"He pushed him over a cliff. They didn't find him for a while…"

She continued to stare at him, once more conflicted. He seemed to be so sincere, so caring – certainly he couldn't have done what the police wanted to believe he'd done… "What did you do?"

"I left my foster mother and started traveling," he remembered, sitting back in his chair and relaxing a bit. "That's about the time I ended up traveling to Africa, like I told you about the other night…"

Erin nodded. "I remember."

"So you see," he stated, pointing to the fork in her hand which had hung in the air with a bite of salad on it for a while now, "I know how devastating the loss of a friend can be – and how easy it is to make yourself sick over it. I'm not going to let you make the same mistakes I did."

She obediently put the bite of salad in her mouth and chewed thoughtfully. As much as she didn't want to, she was finding herself relaxing and wanting to enjoy the evening with him again. The police just HAD to be wrong. "Better?" she asked with the very tiniest trace of humor.

"A few more like that, and it will definitely be much better," he smiled at her.

Erin found herself smiling back and then looking down into her food guiltily. She hoped that whatever the police were doing that was being aided by her keeping him occupied would exonerate him – because it was very difficult not to enjoy his company. "So, tell me about your day," she asked suddenly, wanting something else to occupy her thoughts than Cherry's death and Lyle's potential involvement in it. "You've been in such a good mood…"

"Well," Lyle found himself smiling proudly at her, "I think I'm on the verge of a big promotion. The last man at the top where I work just recently moved on, and the powers that be are considering my recommendation."

"You mean, a promotion to CEO?" Erin stared. "You'll be the boss of everybody there?"

Lyle's grin grew wider. "Yup. And then, perhaps, I can make a little more space in my schedule to come up to Baltimore. Would you like that?"

Erin hesitated before nodding. If Lyle were innocent, she would very much enjoy his company on a more regular basis. "When will you know for sure?"

He shrugged. "I don't know exactly. The men responsible for making that decision got called away today – I'm hoping to hear from them tomorrow morning."

"You have to be back at work in the morning." It wasn't a question.

"Just like the last time," Lyle answered softly, but with plenty of meaning behind the simple words. "I have some meetings I just can't miss – especially if I'm going to be Number One around there." He reached out and claimed her hand again. "But I can stay for a while," he promised her in a low and seductive voice, "if you want me to."

The young blonde caught herself as she was about to agree. What would he think if, as he undressed her, he found the microphone? No – tonight would have to be just the dinner. The next time, however, would be much more memorable for having had him cleared of any wrongdoing. "I have to get the paper written that I was supposed to do with Cherry," she told him with a voice filled with genuine regret. "I'm afraid that this time…"

"That's OK," Lyle soothed, bringing her hand to his lips before letting go again. "These things happen." No, he wasn't happy at all. He wanted to spend the night in her arms again – to feel the intoxicating freedom of making love to a woman who wanted him. But circumstances were conspiring against him.

"Mr. Lyle Parker?"

Lyle looked up into a very taciturn face. "Yes?"

"Also known as Mr. Robert Lyle?"

Lyle's face froze at the mention of the very old alias. "Is there something I can do for you?"

The two men facing him pulled badges from their overcoat pockets. "We're Baltimore P.D. homicide detectives, Mr. Parker – or whatever your name really is. You're under arrest for the kidnap, rape and murder of Cherry Fu."

Lyle glanced at Erin's face and found it a mask of surprise and sudden loathing. "No! Erin…"

"You have the right to remain silent," Bill Lowe told him as he hauled the man up and out of his chair so that his partner could handcuff Lyle's hands behind him. "Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney…"

"Erin!" Lyle was desperate. "Call the Centre – tell them to send a lawyer…"

His last vision of her was her pale and stunned face sitting behind a plateful of seafood salad before Stan Bridges had turned him to walk face forward through the restaurant doors and toward the squad car.

oOoOo

Jarod sat staring at his TV, a can of raspberry ice tea – a recent discovery – in one hand and the remote in the other. Carl Bennings, he knew, was downstairs at the dinner being thrown for the founder and the trustees of the foundation, having the time of his life. Too overwhelmed by the last few days' events, Jarod had begged off and retreated to his room to channel surf and try not to think too hard. Unfortunately, nothing on the TV caught his attention, and his mind refused to simply stop.

So much of what Parker had told him had rung true – that in most cases, everything he'd done with or to her had inevitably been more about him than about her. His desire to puncture the balloon of her unconditional love of Mr. Parker had even had a selfish facet to it – namely to win her loyalty to himself and his cause than to free her from an illusion that was slowly eating her alive.

Was that all he'd been doing – feeding a selfish desire to reshape the world according to his own whims and wishes? And if so, how did that make him any different than the hated and despised powers that be in the Centre Tower who had held him prisoner for most of his life to serve THEIR purposes? What kind of a person did that make him?

Confused and for the first time utterly demoralized, he reached for his cell phone before he knew what he was doing and pressed a speed dial number that he hadn't touched for nearly six years.

The phone on the other end rang three times before the line was picked up. "This is Sydney."

"Sydney." That one word was a cry for help and a sigh of comfort rolled into one. Jarod hadn't realized just how much of a touchstone Sydney's availability on the other end of a phone call had been – or how much he'd missed it dreadfully in the years since he'd forcibly prohibited himself from reaching out.

"Hello, Jarod." The Belgian psychiatrist's voice sounded calm and secure – almost knowing. "I've been expecting your call."

"How do I stop making it all be about me and my wishes?" Jarod blurted out, summarizing his dilemma.

"You can't," Sydney's voice was comfortingly warm. "It's the downside to having a sense of self. You're reaching for an ideal form of altruism – something unattainable."

"I didn't want to hurt her…"

"I'm sure you didn't," the softly musical voice rumbled in his ear. "All of us do what we think is right – for ourselves and for those around us. Many times, we can be very blind to the impact our actions have on those others until they're brought forcefully to our attention – and then the realization does US damage in the process." There was a pause. "That was, after all, some of the substance of our discussion just yesterday, was it not?"

Jarod blinked and for the first time recognized the same type of motivation in his actions toward Miss Parker as had existed in many of Sydney's actions over his lifetime. "I hadn't thought of it that way, but…"

"The problem comes in assuming the authority to make decisions for another," Sydney continued as if giving a lecture. "Because we believe we're right, we tend to overlook the fact that those others whom our decision affects may not agree with us – may believe quite differently."

The Pretender slouched in his chair, his raspberry ice tea temporarily forgotten. "How do I make it right again?" he asked plaintively.

"In regard to Miss Parker, I'm not sure you can," Sydney answered with gentle honesty. "I know I've been working for nearly ten years to make up for my part in what was done to you, and I've only just scratched the surface." There was another pause. "There's another thing – in my experience, it's far harder to forgive yourself, once you realize what you've been doing, than to win the forgiveness of the one you hurt in your single-minded zeal. Apologies are only words, they may make the one apologizing feel better, in many cases may justify the anger or hurt in the one being apologized to. But as a resolution technique, they are insufficient on their own."

Jarod leaned into the cell phone, propping it and his head up by propping the elbow on the overstuffed arm of the chair. "But I can't leave things like this, Sydney. How do I start showing that I've changed?"

"By not making the same mistake again," Sydney told him bluntly. "Learn from the recognition of your mistake, and don't do it again. Be aware of how and when you tend to make your mistake and be more mindful in similar situations in future. Finally – although this is where patience and persistence comes into play – you have to demonstrate to those you've harmed that you've changed, and you do so by demonstrating by your actions over time that you aren't making that same mistake again."

"So I shouldn't call her and apologize?"

"I didn't say that," Sydney countered. "On the contrary, your calling her would go a long way toward preventing either of you from believing the other wants to just ditch your relationship completely. You do feel your friendship is worth preserving, do you not?"

That made Jarod sit up a little straighter. "Of course I do!"

"Then call her one of these days. I think she could probably use the lift." Jarod was quiet for a long moment. "Jarod? Are you still there?"

"Yeah. You know, I was thinking that I've missed our talks."

Sydney's voice had never been warmer. "I missed them as well."

The silence that grew spoke eloquently of bridges being mended. "Thanks."

"Take care of yourself – and say hello to Mr. Bennings for me."


	18. No Easy Answers

Chapter Eighteen – No Easy Answers

Sam stood quickly, switching from visitor mode to full alert mode, as Mr. Abé and a single ebony-faced bodyguard walked through the open door. "Miss Parker," the African greeted her with a shallow bow, "it's good to see that your condition continues to improve."

Miss Parker nodded at him, knowing instinctively that the lack of tubes and lines into her body to combat the consequences of having been skewered by a broken pine branch would naturally mean she was getting better. "Thank you, sir," she replied formally, and then waved for Sam to bring the chair he'd been occupying closer to the bed. "Please have a seat."

Mr. Abé shook his head and waved for Sam to cease his efforts. "It will not be necessary, Miss Parker," he replied equally formally, "for this will be but a very short visit."

"You've made your decision," Miss Parker guessed.

"Assisted in great part by a report from a friend within the Centre that your Mr. Lyle has been arrested in Baltimore on suspicion of murdering a woman there recently – and that the federal prosecutor may level additional charges regarding several other murders in a number of other states."

Miss Parker stared. "He's… been arrested?"

"And is being held without bail," the elderly African told her.

Miss Parker didn't bat an eye. "You knew this would happen sooner or later," she commented evenly. "There have been a number of times since my father died that I knew it HAD to be the Triumvirate pulling strings to keep his name from being connected to killings…"

"As you are here, in the hospital, and Mr. Raines is dead, there was nobody at the Centre to authorize dispatching a lawyer to Mr. Lyle's assistance," Mr. Abé told her. "And when he called us directly, I informed him that the Triumvirate would no longer be rushing to his aid. Covering for him was one of the ways in which the Centre seemed to be bleeding funds."

"Which leaves you where in your decision as to the Centre's future?" Miss Parker asked pointedly. "I can tell you right now that there is more than adequate evidence to convict Lyle several times over – if one knows where to look. That means that Lyle will not be in any position to take over as Chairman – and I have no intention of taking the job..."

"There is always the young son of the previous Chairman, Mr. Parker…"

"No!" Miss Parker burst out angrily. "Absolutely not! Jordan is too small a child to have that kind of responsibility…"

"The Triumvirate can appoint a board of trustees to manage the Centre while young Mr. Parker is educated by the finest…"

"You can't do that," Miss Parker announced angrily. "When my father died, I was appointed Jordan's guardian in conjunction with Mr. Raines. Now that Raines is dead, that leaves me as Jordan's sole guardian – and I'll be damned if I'll let another generation of Parker be raised in the shadow of the Centre." Her storm-grey eyes snapped. "You will leave my little brother strictly alone, do you hear me?"

The African's gaze hardened. "You're eliminating all possible alternatives."

"I'm just telling you what alternatives are genuinely open to you – and the number is very seriously limited. You can either absorb the Centre into the Triumvirate itself – at which point you will pay me and to the shareholders full market value of all real and intangible assets – or you will allow the Centre to fade into the sunset and we will reimburse the Triumvirate any moneys owed." Miss Parker glanced over at Sam and saw him watching the reactions of the African's bodyguard to Mr. Abé's moods. That sight gave her strength and courage.

Mr. Abé stared hard at her for a long, silent moment before finally taking a very deep breath. "You leave me no choice, then, than to authorize you to oversee the dismantling and sale of Centre properties and assets with an eye to refunding the Triumvirate's overall investment in your corporation."

Miss Parker nodded, not letting her triumph or satisfaction show visibly on her face. "You will need to meet with the Chief Financial Officer, and bring a complete set of books demonstrating the extent to which the Triumvirate has invested in the Centre. I don't expect any of those entries to include the times you bailed Lyle out of trouble with law enforcement or other such discretionary payments."

"Even if doing so was at the direct request of Mr. Parker or Mr. Raines?" was the startled question.

"Even so," she replied firmly. "Bailing Lyle out of a jam didn't directly benefit the Centre per se – only the reputation of one corporate officer."

"You strike a very hard bargain, Miss Parker," Mr. Abé grumbled with a backward glance at his own bodyguard, "but as you have pointed out, the alternatives are very limited. We – the Triumvirate – will agree to your proposal." The elderly African rose from his seat slowly, as if the movement was painful. "Our lawyers will be in contact with you regarding the precise wording of the agreement to finalize this."

"I'm hoping to be back in Blue Cove by the end of the week," Miss Parker informed him with a slightly more congenial tone. "It would be deeply appreciated – by me, if by nobody else – if you could allow further negotiations on this matter rest until after the weekend. I'd like to be a little less under the influence of the heavy painkillers and a little more up to speed on the full extent of the work to be done."

Mr. Abé nodded slowly. "Please call your secretary and have that person get in contact with my assistant to set up an appointment for Monday morning." He extended his hand to her. "I do believe that it is the Triumvirate's greatest loss that when it finally finds itself in the position to be dealing with the Parker most capable of running the Centre properly, she decides she doesn't want the job."

"Thank you." Miss Parker knew that, coming from this man, she'd received about the highest compliment possible. "I look forward to seeing you on Monday morning."

"Miss Parker." With a quick gesture, the Africans walked sedately from the room, leaving Sam staring at Miss Parker in surprise and admiration.

"You did it," he shook his head in disbelief. "You got them to agree to allow you to close the place down without a fight."

She wagged a forefinger at him. "This isn't finished yet, Sam. I need a cell phone."

"Broots has his…" Sam told her.

"Is this a good time?" Broots knocked on the open door and peeked in. "Miss Parker?"

"Just the man I wanted to see," she waved him in imperiously. "I need your cell phone."

Broots put his arm around Debbie and escorted her into the room and then pulled his cell phone from his jacket pocket as he drew closer to the hospital bed. "It's good to see you feeling better," he commented with a quick glance at Sam.

"Don't go anywhere," she ordered and then dialed a number from memory. "Glenda? Good – I caught you. I want…" She listened to a burst of excitement from the other end of the line. "Yes, I've heard. Listen – there are a number of things I need you to do for me immediately. First, make an appointment for me to meet with Mr. Abé on Monday morning and clear it with his personal assistant. Secondly, I want…" She looked over at Sam and snapped her fingers in a familiar display of impatience. "Give me the names of two sweepers that you can trust."

"Hal and Dave," Sam answered immediately. They had worked often enough in conjunction with the search for Jarod that he sometimes wondered that the two weren't unofficial members of the team.

Miss Parker turned back to her phone call. "I want sweepers Hal and Dave to take up guard positions in the nursery on a rotating basis until I get back. Absolutely nobody not already on Jordan's schedule of visitors or helpers is to get to him. Finally, I want our Chief Financial Officer to look through the Centre budget and make a full accounting of all Triumvirate investments – from direct purchase of assets to project contracts and outstanding loans. I want that report on my desk Monday morning when I get to work." She listened again. "Exactly. I'll be in touch again – and I'll have a new number at which you can reach me. Get busy." She disconnected and handed the phone back to Broots. "Thanks."

"What's going on?" Broots asked, pocketing the phone.

Miss Parker put out her left arm so as to accept a quick hug from Debbie, who was looking more than a little lost. "Hey there," she said softly as the girl carefully returned the hug, "what's the matter?"

"We're going back?" Debbie asked fearfully.

"There's nothing to be feared back there anymore," Miss Parker soothed the young girl and then looked up at Broots. "Lyle's managed to get himself arrested for murder in Baltimore – and the feds are moving on other cases elsewhere…"

"Oh man!" Broots' eyes widened. "So, if Lyle's in the pokie and Raines is pushing up daisies, does that mean…" His eyes widened even further. "That makes you…"

"Nope," Miss Parker shook her head firmly. "Not if I have my way. I'm going to do what has needed to be done for years, Broots – I'm going to close it down."

"No more Centre?" Debbie asked.

"No more Centre," Miss Parker responded. "But I have to move fast – because the Triumvirate has already thought through one way to circumvent my wishes. They wanted to take Jordan and…"

"They can't do that," Broots stated firmly, knowing that the time had arrived for him to hand over the news he'd been sitting on. "Miss Parker, while I was sitting around waiting for word from Sam and Ethan, I hacked into the Centre mainframe and found out that the DNA report you were waiting for was waiting for us."

Miss Parker sat up a little straighter. "Well," she cocked an eyebrow at him. "I take it you read the report?"

"Oh yeah," Broots sighed and had a hard time meeting her gaze. "I would have told you earlier what the results were, but you were so sick…"

"Spit it out, Broots!" she snapped the fingers of her left hand at him.

"Debbie, maybe Sam will take you down to the cafeteria for an ice cream," Broots suggested, his gaze boring into that of the sweeper in mute plea.

Sam nodded and put out a big hand. "C'mon, Short Stuff – let's let your dad and Miss Parker talk for a bit." Debbie waved uncertainly at her father and surrogate mother and then let Sam pull her from the room.

"OK, we're alone," Miss Parker sighed. "Spill."

"OK – in the first place, Jordan IS your son," Broots reported bluntly.

Miss Parker paled slightly. "He is. My son!" Slowly she sank back against her pillows while her mind struggled to assimilate the knowledge that she was a mother. Finally she gazed at her computer tech again and noticed that the tension on his face hadn't eased. "I take it that wasn't everything?"

"No, ma'am." Broots sighed. "When Sydney and I sent in the samples for the testing, we included everyone represented in the bodily fluids vault for consideration. We thought that maybe it was time for all the real relationships to come to light once and for all."

Miss Parker nodded. "It would be nice to know and not have to guess any longer. So what's the rest of the news that has you looking like you want to find a hole to hide in?"

Broots sank into the chair recently turned down by Mr. Abé when his knees wouldn't hold him up any longer. "First of all, we wanted to know Jordan's heritage – so we were looking for who would be the father…"

"Broots…" Miss Parker growled. "Drag this out, and I'll drag something else out of you…"

"It's Kyle, Miss Parker. Jordan is Kyle's son."

She blinked at him. "Not Jarod's?" It made sense that they would have tried to breed her with Jarod once they lost Gemini – the last attempt to create a person with the psychic sensitivities of Catherine Jamison's line with the Pretender gene that had created Jarod. But to have the father be Kyle instead?

"I looked into the mainframe yesterday, trying to trace that down when it didn't make much sense," Broots sighed. "It seems that there was a one digit difference between the vial number from the sperm sample collected from Jarod and the one collected from Kyle while he was still at the Centre. When the geneticists went for Jarod's they pulled the wrong vial. I found a memo from Mr. Raines ordering the disciplining of the men responsible…"

"Oh for God's sake!" Miss Parker rubbed her forehead with her fingers.

"That's not all," Broots sighed again. "The test results you ordered on Lyle and Angelo were fudged. Lyle's not your brother – Angelo is."

"Now THAT'S a good thing," Miss Parker smiled at him. "Believe it or not, I'd far rather have Cousin It sitting in the branches of my family tree than Lyle's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." She tipped her head as she noted that still Broots looked nervous. "Don't tell me there's more…"

"Hang onto your hat, Miss Parker. Mr. Parker wasn't your father…"

"I know that, you moron!"

"Yeah, but neither was Mr. Raines. Seems that Mr. Raines was shooting blanks, just like your… Mr. Parker was. They were brothers, though – that part of the story was true…"

"So who is my father, Broots?" Miss Parker asked, her voice descending until it was almost inaudible.

"I can't be sure…"

Miss Parker would have exploded, but a look at Broots' pale face gave her the reason to forestall the explosion. He cared about the news he carried – it had affected him personally – she couldn't fault him for that. He'd been too good a friend to abuse too much. She took a very deep breath to calm herself. "What do you mean you aren't sure?" she asked in a deceptively calm voice.

"The genetics of identical twins makes it almost impossible to separate out and distinguish between the two without a much more time-consuming process," Broots explained with a pained look on his face. "So I can't be sure whether it is…"

"Jacob or Sydney," Miss Parker finished for him, her face blank with shock. "You're sure about this?"

Broots nodded. "Like I said, I hacked into the mainframe to check some of this stuff out. There was another memo, from your… Mr. Parker… authorizing medical tests to be run on several key Centre employees – including Syd and his brother – that included the taking of sperm samples." He looked down at his hands. "I also found a report from Mrs. Parker's gynecologist on the results of the in-vitro fertilization…"

"That bastard!" Miss Parker sank deep into her pillow not exactly sure whether she was swearing at Mr. Parker or the geneticist who'd reported that Mr. Raines was her father. "Syd never knew, then…"

"That his sample had been used?" Broots blinked. "Probably not. And I'll bet Jacob wouldn't have known either."

Miss Parker closed her eyes. After all this time, she finally knew where she stood in the world – more or less. Sydney WAS family after all – either as an uncle or a father.

"You OK, Miss Parker?" Broots inquired with a quick touch to her hand as it rested on the blanket next to her hip.

"It will take a while," she admitted, opening her eyes again, "but yes, I think I'll be OK." She eyed him. "I'm sorry I barked at you. That couldn't have been a picnic for you either."

Broots' eyebrows flew up to his long-departed hairline at the first apology he'd ever received from his prickly boss in all the years he'd known her. "I knew it wasn't going to be easy news for you to take," he replied, ducking his head.

"Does Sydney know?"

"Not yet," Broots told her.

"I want to tell him myself," she said softly. "If you don't mind…"

Broots shook his head. No, he didn't mind a bit. If he were Sydney, he'd want to find out he was either an uncle or father from his niece or daughter, and not just a friend. He put his forehead into his hand and tried not to imagine what it would be like for Sydney to find out just how diabolical the Centre had been to him once more.

And even though it meant he was on the verge of losing a job, he couldn't help but be glad that the Centre's days were finally numbered. An organization led by someone capable of such callous evil didn't deserve to continue.

oOoOo

Erin couldn't believe that she'd actually come in here. She stared at the row of chairs that lined a counter divided into three-foot sections with privacy barriers, thick Plexiglas and matching sets of telephones at each station. Several of those stations had someone seated in the chair talking to a prisoner on the other side of the Plexiglas – and several of those someone's had small children playing at their feet.

The officer who had escorted her into the room pointed her to a station and, after waiting for her to sit down, went to inform the officer in charge that the prisoner in question had a visitor.

Lyle wasn't wearing his crisp, expensive business suit any longer, nor was he in the very comfortable and expensive jogging suit. The orange jail jumpsuit made his skin look sallow and took away a good deal of the debonair façade. The fact that his hands and ankles were chained, and that Lyle had walked toward his side of the station with tiny, restricted steps merely drove home that he was a prisoner. He sat down in the chair opposite hers across the Plexiglas barrier and waited patiently for the guard to free his right hand to use the phone.

"Erin." His voice was soft and gentle, just as it always had been for her. "I'm glad you're here. I…"

"You killed Cherry," she interrupted in an agitated voice. "They said that you raped her – probably more than once." She glared at him. "They said you tortured her."

"They have to blame someone," Lyle shook his head at her. "You can't believe…"

"I wiped a drop of blood from your neck that day," she continued as if she hadn't heard a word he'd said. "You came to keep our date directly from killing her, didn't you? You hadn't cut yourself shaving – that was Cherry's blood!"

"Erin, I…"

"And you made love to me the night after you raped my friend," she spat, her emotions finally gaining the upper hand. "I thought you'd never done such a thing, but here…"

"I hadn't," Lyle interrupted her this time. "I'd had sex before, but I swear to you that I'd never made love…"

"You make me sick," Erin ground out with difficulty, "and you make me make myself sick. I'm never going to be able to forgive myself for sleeping with the man who raped and killed my best friend."

Lyle sat there with an open mouth while he tried desperately to think of a way to answer her. "I never meant to hurt you," he said finally. "You were sweet and young and innocent and the best thing that had ever happened to me. I swear…"

"I hope they fry you to a crisp," Erin said, forcing her voice into steadiness. "You are a monster!"

"Perhaps," Lyle replied, convinced at last that she would never believe in his innocence and finding the loss of her confidence more painful than he'd ever imagined, "but I did love you. You showed me that life as a normal man wasn't as insipid as I'd been taught. And more than anything else, I regret that you ended up hurt. I wanted to keep you safe from all of this."

"I hate you," Erin replied and composed her face into a hard and cold mask of uncaring. "I hope you burn in Hell for eternity for what you've done – to Cherry and to all those other women you murdered, and to me."

Without another word, she hung up the telephone and rose, turned on her heel and walked away from the station – away from the Plexiglas and the face of the man on the other side. Her back ramrod straight from sheer will, Erin paused while the officer in charge opened the doorway so that she could escape Lyle and the illusions that she'd allowed herself to believe in – escape from the dream of going to college in a big city and being completely independent and self-secure.

It wasn't until she was back out on the street and climbing into a cab that would take her to the bus station that she let fall the tears that had burned behind her eyes. Damn him – damn him to Hell!

And the curse became a mantra that she repeated to herself until she was climbing onto the bus for home.

oOoOo

Carl Bennings smiled as Jarod brought them both cups of coffee from the urn provided for everyone involved in the Bennings Foundation. "You look much better this morning," he commented to his friend as he accepted the white porcelain mug. "You must have gotten some decent sleep."

Jarod nodded and sipped at the bitter brew. "I do feel much better today." He actually managed to paste a smile on his face. "What about you? Are you feeling like taking a plane trip back east after the luncheon?"

Bennings paled a little bit but then put on a brave face. "I suppose this falls under the same category as climbing back onto a horse after it throws you, doesn't it?"

"Something like that," Jarod chuckled. "Despite everything, statistically, air travel is still safer by far than any other form…"

"Oh, shut up," Bennings shook his head at his friend in disgust. "Don't look too pleased – you get to nursemaid a white-knuckled coward…"

"You'll be fine," Jarod reassured him. "Just think of the view from your penthouse suite…"

"I suppose I could do that," Bennings agree. "I have enough work to do once I settle down, just to deal with some of the proposals I've heard yesterday and this morning that I may not even notice…"

"I have my laptop with me," Jarod told him enticingly. "You can be telecommuting even as you're commuting for real."

Bennings eyed his friend evenly. "What about you? You gonna want to stopover in Salt Lake City on the way home?"

Jarod's gaze skittered away from the emerald spear wielded by his friend. "No," he replied with a small shake of the head. "There's nothing in Salt Lake City…"

"With a short car trip up to Ogden…"

"Not even that," Jarod replied, the shaking of his head growing a little more determined. "I talked to Sydney last night…"

"Ah-HAH! I knew there had to be a reason for your better mood today!" Bennings crowed.

"Yeah, and he said for me to tell you hello," Jarod grimaced at his boss. "I've decided that I'll try to call Parker after I get home – and when Sydney can give me a phone number at which she can be reached. We both need some time to think about what we said to the other…"

"During your argument, you mean?"

Jarod nodded. "She was right – it was a discussion that had been a long time in coming. To me, it was a wake-up call I've had coming for years."

Bennings sipped thoughtfully at his coffee. "Just as long as you aren't going to let things slide until they've fallen completely apart to the point you can't put them back together again."

"I don't think Sydney would let me get away with that," Jarod mused aloud, more to himself than to Bennings.

"I told you I thought he was a wise old bird," Bennings chuckled. "To be honest, I wouldn't mind getting to know that man better myself."

"He'll psychoanalyze you faster than you can put your shoes on," Jarod warned. When Bennings merely showed him a skeptical expression, Jarod shook his head. "Fine, don't say I didn't warn you. The man raised me, after all – I should know."

"Spoken like a true, long-suffering son," Bennings chuckled, missing the strange look that flashed across Jarod's face at the comment. "But let's forget those in your past that you've decided NOT to put back into the past. I need to know if you have any ideas as to who you think would make a good manager for a new Foundation office in Chicago."

"Chicago?" Jarod gaped. "Is THAT where your trustees see the Foundation moving next?"

Bennings beamed. "I just KNEW you'd appreciate the irony of setting up a Foundation office in the same town that housed my father's old factory…

oOoOo

Miss Parker could count on one hand the number of times in her lifetime that she'd seen Sydney at a complete loss for words. This would be the most memorable of them all, she thought as her old friend and colleague's mouth simply dropped wide open and his eyes showed how his thought processes had been brought to a complete standstill. Behind him, Michelle shifted nervously. "You're sure about this?" she asked skeptically.

"The technician that ran the tests was evidently someone Sydney and Broots trusted implicitly," Miss Parker stated, her gaze not deviating from his face. "For the first time, I think I can say that there would be no reason for this man to bollix or fake results." She watched him struggle to get his mind working again. "For God's sake, say something, Syd!"

Sydney's mouth worked soundlessly for a moment before the chestnut eyes suddenly blinked and he was functioning again – albeit with some difficulty. "I don't know what to say, Parker… I…" Finally his gaze caught and held hers. "What about you?"

Her gaze still didn't falter. "I told you up on the mountain how I used to dream about you being my real father, remember?" She bit her lip. "I'm just afraid that you'll be disappointed now that it isn't a dream anymore…"

He shook his head to the extent his cervical collar would allow him to move. "I haven't had cause to be disappointed in you for a long time," he replied softly. "And, to be quite honest, I'm just as afraid of the same thing."

Slowly she shook her head. "I'm not disappointed, Sydney. In fact…" Her smile was slow in germinating but grew quickly. "…I'm perfectly content with the idea if you are."

"As uncle, or…"

"As a father," she answered quickly. "I remember that Mother used to trust you – hell, you even had me ready to kill you because you'd kept your word to her by keeping me in the dark. I would like to think that the only person she'd have trusted to that extent would have been the one who gave her me." She shrugged. "Maybe not by the traditional method, but…"

"I guess that makes me Jordan's real Grandpa, doesn't it?" Sydney's smile was equally slow in sparking, and just as quick to spread. "And Angelo…"

"That means he's your son too." Parker hadn't thought that far – and the impact of that was considerable. "I have a twin brother!" For the first time, saying those words didn't make her gorge rise dangerously in the back of her throat.

Michelle put her hands on Sydney's back and leaned into his ear. "I think I need to make a phone call to Nicholas," she whispered to him, "and let him know that he has a half-brother and a half-sister." Sydney turned carefully and looked at Michelle, and then sighed in relief when the expression he found on her face was one of fondness. "I'm happy for you, Sydney," she smiled and dropped a kiss onto his cheek before looking up at Miss Parker. "I'll be back."

For a long moment, an uncomfortable silence spread between them. Sydney finally made a stab at conversation with, "What did Broots have to say about this?"

"I think he was more relieved than anything else when he'd finally told me everything," she answered. "Frankly, for my part, knowing for certain that I'm not related to Lyle is a huge relief."

"This is going to change things…"

"Some things," Miss Parker nodded. "Some things won't change. I'll still probably call you Freud when I'm ticked at you."

"Not many daughters can claim to have a favorite accepted epithet for a parent," Sydney quipped with a lopsided grin. "I hope things don't change too much. We've already started over on our fresh page – I'd just as soon not abandon anything we'd already worked out between us."

"I just don't think I'll ever be able to call you Daddy," she told him sadly. "That name just has too much baggage."

"Even Nicholas calls me Sydney, Parker," he informed her gently. "It doesn't matter…"

"It does to me." Her face wore an expression of vulnerability. "I want to be able to acknowledge the relationship in public." There was determination in the midst of that vulnerability. "Call it my way of declaring independence from the past."

"Well, in that case, here's always 'Papa' – it sounds a bit more European, more Belgian," he suggested cautiously after a moment to consider.

"Would you answer to 'Papa', Sydney?" she asked softly.

His smile was one of the rare, wide, full-toothed beams that indicated just how contented he was. "I'd be honored to answer to 'Papa', Parker," he replied. "I just hope I can live up to your expectations of what a 'Papa' would be like."

Miss Parker patted the mattress on the edge of the bed next to her. "Just keep on doing what you normally do, Freud," she told him as she watched him boost himself out of the chair and once more take the closer seat. "But for now, I'd just settle for a hug from my father."

Sydney gathered her into his arms as if she were the most precious thing in his life. This was above and beyond anything he'd ever hoped to accomplish with their relationship shift from up on the mountain. "My daughter," he murmured more to himself than to anybody else. "Mine!" It was real, and it still would take time to sink in completely.

"Papa," she murmured back, tightening her left arm about him possessively. She'd spent decades suffering through the hugs of a man who not only wasn't her father despite his claims, but his hugs had been cold and calculating ones. Sydney's hugs over the last couple of days had been warm and comforting, and she knew she'd never wonder about the difference again.

oOoOo

Sam peeked into the hospital room and froze when he saw that Sydney had Miss Parker in his arms and seemed to be comforting her. This wasn't the time for a sweeper to intrude, he knew, and he turned about and headed for the front lobby, feeling just a little left out – and feeling stupid and ridiculous for letting what he'd seen get to him like that.

At least he didn't feel cheated – he knew better, or at least should have. He'd always known that Sydney was closer to Miss Parker and she to him than either of them had ever wanted to admit. So many times over the years they'd all worked closely together, he'd watched Sydney pull Miss Parker's feet back down to earth when events seemed to swirl out of control around her. He'd even seen her go to bat for Sydney to her fa… Mr. Parker's face several times.

It was a good thing that, if nothing else, their time together up on that mountainside had brought them closer still. And Broots' news would have cemented any changes into place that much more securely. He didn't resent that – really he didn't…

He slipped money into the vending machine and walked over to a seat not far from the front door and slumped into it. Who was he kidding? He resented the hell out of the fact that while Broots and Sydney were allowed to get closer – as they gained the status of being practically family – he was left on the outside looking in. He'd watched her back just as capably as either of the others. It just wasn't fair…

"Sam?"

He looked up and saw Michelle standing a few feet away from him. "Yes?"

"Miss Parker is looking for you."

He shook his head. "I was just there," he told her. "She and Sydney were involved in a very private conversation."

"I know," the pretty woman with the short auburn hair smiled at him, "but Sydney's doctor came around, and now Sydney's signing the paperwork to get himself released. I heard Miss Parker wonder to one of the nurses where you'd gone – I thought I'd let you know…"

"Thanks." Sam nodded and waited for her to walk away and leave him to his thoughts again.

She was calling for him. He rose, tipped the can of soda up to his mouth and drained it in a series of huge gulps. He'd better get back – after all, she was still his boss for the time being. He deliberately steered his mind away from what he'd do when there was no more Centre – when Miss Parker wouldn't need him at her back any longer.

It was a long walk back to Miss Parker's room, during which time Sam brutally disciplined his mind and his attitude into one of readiness to serve. If all he had left was the short span of time that it would take until the Centre closed and he lost his job, then he'd be damned sure to make his service exemplary. That would be the only thing he could take away from nearly fifteen years of his life – the knowledge that he'd been the best at what he'd done.

"Sam." Her voice was relieved as she caught sight of him through the open doorway. "I need you to do me a favor."

"Yes, ma'am."

The near monotone response brought Miss Parker up short, and she stared at her sweeper for a moment before snapping her fingers. "Get in here – we need to talk."

"Yes, ma'am." Sam walked over to the side of the bed and stood stiffly at attention.

"Cut that crap and sit down. I'm not a drill instructor, and you're not a raw recruit."

Startled, he glanced down into her face before pulling up the chair and sitting in it. "What can I do for you, Miss Parker?"

"Talk to me."

Sam's brows rose toward his hairline. "You want to know more about the south side of East LA?"

"Nooo…" Her expression was one of muted exasperation. "I want to know more about why you're suddenly pulling an attitude on me."

"I'm sorry…"

"An apology explains nothing," she said with a shake of the head. "We've known each other for how long now?"

"Fifteen years, ma'am…" Sam answered without even needing to think about it.

"Exactly," she responded. "I think that gives me some experience with your moods and behavior – enough to know that you're acting like I've done something wrong, or something to offend."

"No, ma'am! That isn't it…"

"All right." She relaxed back into her pillow. "So tell me what IS wrong."

"It's nothing," he sighed, and then sighed again. "It's stupid." After all, she'd just found out that Sydney WAS family – what did he expect her to do? He knew very well how much Mr. Parker had meant to her, despite the shitty way the old man had treated her. Did he really expect her to behave any differently toward Sydney? And Broots was Debbie's father – and he knew how much Debbie meant to her. It was an 'in' that he didn't have.

"OK. It's nothing, and it's stupid – but it's still bugging the hell outta you. So talk to me."

Sam sagged. Miss Parker in this kind of mood would be persistent until he finally told her what she wanted to know. "It's just that with all the warm fuzzies floating around here with Sydney being your father and all that, I was…" His words tumbled to a stop. What audacity, to think that he had a place…

"You know that I'm more than aware that I couldn't do this if I didn't know you were backing me up, don't you?" she asked quietly.

"I…" He couldn't look at her anymore.

Miss Parker sat for a long moment looking at her personal sweeper, a man who had devoted his life to keeping her safe and doing whatever she asked of him, and remembered that brief glimpse of his deeper emotion that she'd tried to forget. That was when she realized what was going on. He was feeling left out – relegated to the status of Centre muscle and nothing more. She'd promised herself he deserved better.

"Sam, you're important too," she began, knowing how inadequate that sounded. "I mean, my God, you signed yourself out of a hospital to come and try to help me. You've been the strong support behind me that made me know that I could handle anything that came at me. I've relied on you more than you'll ever know – and I don't even know how to begin to tell you how much I…"

Their gazes met at last, caught and held. "I may not say the words, but you're important to me – especially now. I need to know that things are OK between us, because I don't think that I can do what I need to do and worry about you too."

Sam could see that there were deeper emotions running behind that grey gaze – emotions that didn't include any kind of romantic attachment, but instead was replete with warm caring. "You don't have to worry about me, Miss Parker," he told her honestly. "I'm your man for as long as you need my help."

Miss Parker considered, and then put out her left hand to him. Startled, he took her hand in his. "I may not be able to give you what you really want, and I probably won't say anything about this again for a very long time," she said softly, "but I want you know that I do care – a lot. You are big part of what keeps my world straight and running smoothly. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

Sam was beyond touched. She'd given him everything he'd wanted of her and then some. "Yes, ma'am."

"Good." She pulled her hand back. "I need you to do a few favors for me. I need a cell phone – a new one, with no connection to the Centre at all. You can use my credit card – I'll give you a note authorizing your signature."

Sam nodded. "Anything else?"

"Yeah. I need some clothes, for when I'm released tomorrow - hopefully." Her eyes showed she appreciated both the humor and the awkwardness of the situation. "Everything from the ground on up, if you know what I mean. Can you handle it?"

Sam gazed at his boss evenly. "Yes, ma'am," he stated with assurance. "I can handle whatever you need me to do."

oOoOo

Phil Carew threw the last suitcase into the back end of his beat-up station wagon and looked around him. The sun was setting in more ways than one.

News of Lyle's arrest had nearly paralyzed the Centre operations – and from the glances and looks from the others, Phil knew that the likelihood of his being able to continue to work there under a Miss Parker administration were bleak at best. After all, it would have been HIS voice on the phone to the Salt Lake City office, demanding the best team of sweepers/cleaners to handle a rushed-through termination order lacking all the normal protocols. It would be reported that it was he who had implemented Lyle's order to gas the entire ventilation system in an attempt to flush out Angelo.

Before Raines' death, Willy had been one of the most feared and hated sweepers in the entire corporation – because Willy had been the one to see to it that Raines' least request was acted upon. He, Phil Carew, had in just a few days managed to accrue a similar reputation and response from his fellow Centre employees. And now that the man who had enabled his assumption of authority was out of the picture completely, he was an unwanted reminder of the depths to which he'd sunk in order to follow instructions.

There would be no recommendation forthcoming to any future employer from the Centre, which had kept him on the payroll for nearly fifteen years. He was out of a job, and not likely to find another soon with similar pay and benefits, much less authority. What was more, word had it that Miss Parker was intending to close the Centre anyway. Even if he had a position to hang onto without Lyle's direct sponsorship, he'd be out in the cold soon enough anyway – he might as well move along before someone came and told him to get lost.

Phil climbed behind the wheel of his car and backed out of the parking space that was associated with his apartment. The landlord could just figure out some way to deal with the furniture that he'd left behind. There wasn't enough investment in it to make it worth his time trying to sell it himself before leaving.

The drive to the edge of Blue Cove took less than a minute, and Phil didn't look once in the rearview mirror. The world ahead of him was cold and empty, but it was all he had to look forward to. It would have to do.


	19. Epilogue

Chapter Nineteen – Epilogue

(Six months later)

Miss Parker stirred in her bed and stared at the ceiling of her bedroom as her normal wake-up time came and went without the regular buzzing of her alarm clock. It felt strange, after all this time, to not have a reason to get up until just before Jordan needed to up and eating breakfast. There was a complete lack of a sense of urgency to get through her shower and get dressed before her son tumbled down the stairs on his way to school. Today it wouldn't be a challenge to give him his undivided attention without feeling pressured – today, undivided attention would be a cakewalk.

She heaved a sigh and pushed herself into a sitting position on the edge of her bed. She couldn't get back to sleep. She'd spent decades climbing from bed at this hour, before the sun had even begun to peek over the horizon – it would take work to break the habit. She slipped into the satin bathrobe and soft slippers that rested near the foot of her bed – groaning when her right shoulder chose that moment to remind her of the barometric change lately – and walked out into the hallway and down the stairs scratching her head. Coffee – that was what she needed. Of the routines that had ended yesterday, that was one that she could justify maintaining.

After all, today was a special day – the first day of her life that didn't involve the Centre. Yesterday had seen her put a heavy chain into the metal gate at the front drive of the main Centre complex property and lock the place down once and for all. A 'For Sale' sign had been wired onto the tall metal bars of the gate – and the building and underground structure that stood behind it was empty and lifeless. The Centre had ceased to exist as a corporate entity – all that was left was an empty shell of a complex, the proceeds from which would constitute the final refund of Triumvirate investment.

Today would be spent with family and friends. The weather had been much more pleasant and warm lately, and Sydney's invitation to the entire group to gather at his house for a barbeque had gone over well. Michelle would make her prize-winning chili beans to accompany the thick slabs of meat that had been purchased with the last of the Centre discretionary funds. Debbie had promised to make one of her cakes for dessert and to provide garlic bread. Parker's contribution to the feast would be potato salad and deviled eggs. Sam had been put in charge of beverages (nonalcoholic) for everyone.

Miss Parker has halfway down the stairs before she realized that there was the aroma of fresh coffee wafting up toward her from the kitchen. That quickened her steps, and she rounded the corner already having some idea of what she'd find.

Angelo had evidently risen quite a while before her – the coffeepot was full of fresh brew, minus what looked like one helping, and there was a pot on the stove with enough eggs boiling to take care of both the deviled eggs and the hard-boiled eggs that would be needed in the potato salad. "Angelo help," he said with a bright grin.

"I can see that," Miss Parker acknowledged as she followed her nose to the coffeepot and poured herself a healthy dose of caffeine. "Thanks."

Angelo's shaggy head nodded, and he moved to sit in his regular place at the kitchen table where he'd already place his own mug of coffee. "Special day," he stated firmly and then sipped at the hot liquid. "Celebration."

"We've been waiting for this day for a long time now, haven't we?" she replied, moving into her regular seat at the head of the table. A gentle hand reached out and brushed some of the shaggy red hair out of the child-man's eyes.

"All free now," Angelo nodded and ducked his head under his sister's ministrations. "New life?"

Amazingly, Miss Parker had discovered over the months that Angelo had been living in her house on and off and helping her take care of her son that her twin's short and sometimes cryptic pronouncements often had great meaning and thought behind them. It hadn't taken long at all before she'd learned to 'tune in' to him, as Sydney had described the process to her, and understand many if not all the nuances to those brief utterances. "I think I'm going to take a nice long vacation before thinking about another job," she announced firmly. "I've earned it, don't you think?"

Angelo's head turned, and he listened to sounds that apparently only he could hear. "Jordan up," he announced and rose to set the third place at their table with the boy's favorite cereal bowl and juice mug.

Miss Parker watched her brother fuss over getting things ready for his young nephew's arrival with a thoughtful gaze. It had been nearly six months now since she and Sydney and Michelle had arrived back in Blue Cove from Utah to find Angelo huddled against Sydney's arcadia door for warmth, nearly frozen and desperately hungry. Sydney had spent the first few days of his own recuperation at home nursing his son back to health, buoyed by Michelle's expertise in the kitchen and Parker's willing assistance.

The child-like empath divided his time – after he'd been pronounced once more healthy – between his father's home and his sister's. A room in each house had been assigned to him, and the months of steady care, fresh air and sunshine had calmed many of Angelo's autistic tendencies, and the frequency of his panic attacks lessened considerably. Jordan adored him for the enthusiasm his uncle showed for any activity the two of them did together, and being given limited responsibility for Jordan from time to time had given Angelo reason to mature just a little too. Miss Parker suspected that much of curative magic had resided in the knowledge that he actually belonged – that someone cared. Heaven knew that she'd shared in some of that magic herself lately.

"Morning, Mommy," Jordan greeted his mother as he bounced into the kitchen already full of the vim and vigor that would make him a handful at school. His dark eyes swept his mother's attire with concern. "Not going to work today?"

"Morning to you too, Little Man," she answered and then smiled at him. "And nope, Mommy's staying home for a while – no more work."

"Granola or Cheerios?" Angelo asked while standing in front of the open cupboard, looking at the day's offering of breakfast options.

"Granola, Uncle Angelo," Jordan answered absently. "Thanks."

"Good boy," Miss Parker nodded in approval and satisfaction. It had taken training to overcome the lack of instruction in polite interaction with others from years of Centre neglect. Only recently had the 'thank you's' been more consistent and come without prompting. "Grandpa would be proud of you." Sydney's approval had always been an enticement to help Jordan learn his manners – and Miss Parker kept that alive by reminding her son that his grandfather cared about such things.

"We gonna go to Grandpa an' Grandma's later?"

"After school," Angelo answered for his sister and brought the box of Granola to the table.

"Mommy, do you think I could invite Jimmy to come with us for a little while? He wants to see the tree house…"

"I'll talk to your Grandpa about it," Miss Parker told him firmly.

"Can I call him now?" the boy asked eagerly, his blue-grey eyes bright with excitement and anticipation.

"Jordan!" she exclaimed. "I doubt Grandpa's even awake yet! I tell you what," she added when she saw her son's face fall. "I'll call him later this morning and ask – and I'll leave a message at the school office for you to pick up at noon, letting you know what he said. Can you remember to go to the office at noon?"

The dark-haired child nodded vigorously, his mouth crammed with granola.

Miss Parker's gaze collided with and held her twin's. "Special day," Angelo nodded contentedly and headed to the stove to tend to the boiling eggs.

"A special day indeed," she repeated after him and sipped again at her coffee, wondering that her life had changed so dramatically in such a short period of time. So this is freedom, she thought.

Not bad. Not bad at all!

oOoOo

Erin stretched out her blanket on the warm sand next to Cynthia and sat down on the fabric. Above, the warm California sun beat down, promising to improve her tan considerably by the end of the day – if she didn't burn first. It would make for an interesting change of pace from her job at the supermarket not far from her brand new apartment. "Here," she said, tossing the tube of sunscreen to her friend, "you do me and I'll do you."

"Did you get a good look at that guy who came into the store last night?" Cynthia drooled as she slathered sunscreen cream on her friend's back. "I thought I was going to need a bib."

"I was too busy fronting merchandise in the canned goods section," Erin shook her head. "Why?"

"A dreamboat, I tell you – an absolute hunk!" Cynthia smiled. "Business suit, newspaper tucked under his arm – I tell you, Erin, he could park his Lexus in my driveway anytime!"

Erin stiffened beneath her friend's ministrations. "You really don't want to do that," she cautioned her friend. "You never know what you'd be getting yourself into."

"C'mon," Cynthia laughed and shook her head. "Don't be an old fuddy-duddy. How are we supposed to scope out all the really fine and eligible bachelors if we don't let one or two get a little closer than just over the counter, girl?"

Erin waited until her friend had finished massaging the sunscreen into her back before turning around, retrieving the tube and squeezing out a healthy amount into her palm. "Trust me, I've been there," she said softly and seriously, "and I got myself in WAY over my head with the kind of guy that no girl should ever have to deal with."

Cynthia turned her head and finally noticed that Erin's face had paled and her lips were pulled into a tight, worried line. "Hey there! You OK?"

Damn him, Erin thought to herself, the old mantra rising easily in the back of her mind, damn him to Hell! This was what he'd stolen from her – the ability to enjoy the prospect of meeting and getting to know men without a paranoid fear of finding herself with another serial killer. Her ability to trust had been another victim of a serial killer's violence.

"No," she admitted quietly to her friend and began massaging sun screen onto Cynthia's back. "I'm not OK – not about stuff like that. I'm serious – you don't want to let any guy park his Lexus in your driveway just because he's cute or debonair. You never know what a face like that could be hiding." She shuddered, even beneath the warm sun. "Let's talk about something else, shall we? Maybe like what we intend to do with ourselves for the rest of the weekend?"

Cynthia waited until Erin's hands left her back, and then she turned around to face her friend. "You scare me sometimes, you know," the pretty brunette told her newest best friend with a frown.

"Good," Erin answered with unexpected vehemence. "I wish I'd had somebody scare the hell outta me once upon a time."

"Good God – I've never seen you get like this." Cynthia's pique was turning to worry.

Erin flopped herself onto her stomach on her towel. "Sorry," she sighed. "It's just that six months ago, I got myself involved with what I thought was a really nice guy – just like the one you said was in the store yesterday. He turned out to be not such a nice guy."

Cynthia's worry began to evaporate. "You had me worried that maybe you'd once dated a serial killer or something."

Erin turned her face away. "Or something like that," she replied, closing her eyes.

Six months, and still the thoughts of Lyle made her nauseated. Six months – two of them spent at home with the safety of her parents' protection around her – and she still had nightmares about Cherry Fu. It hadn't helped that she'd gotten too curious and made the mistake of attending Lyle's trial for the first time on the day the forensic evidence had been presented. When the rice pot had been presented, along with the report of what had been found in it, she'd stumbled from the courtroom to the restroom and lost her breakfast. It hadn't been comforting to know that she wasn't the only one similarly sickened that day.

Lyle had seen her at the trial – had even tried to catch her eye while being escorted in to the defense table – but she'd done her best to seem to ignore him. She was there to watch justice being done for Cherry. She'd been there when he'd been sentenced to death too. That was two months ago. She'd left for the other side of the continent the very next day.

How long, she wondered, until she'd be able to enjoy her life the way she had before? How long before what happened in Baltimore was only an unhappy memory that only got dredged up once in a while?

How long before she didn't spend a part of every day asking herself these questions?

oOoOo

"You're up early, dear," Margaret said in surprise when her oldest son gave her a surprise hug from behind.

"Couldn't sleep," Jarod said, dropping a kiss on his mother's cheek and then bending over her shoulder to snitch a solitary piece of fried potato from the pan. "You heard the news last night…"

Margaret nodded. "I'm still not sure I believe it," she admitted, slapping at his hand when he tried to snitch another piece. "The Centre was a very old and established bit of evil…"

"Parker told me she was determined to close it down completely – remember?" Jarod reminded her while he moved one counter away to pour himself some coffee. "I even helped with the wording on the contract drawn up between the Centre and the Triumvirate delineating who owed whom what."

"Parker," Margaret repeated the name thoughtfully. "Your father and I were considering just this morning – now that the Centre supposedly is no more – going on a visit to Blue Cove to meet our grandson." She turned her head and looked over her shoulder. "Charles thinks that Ethan will be very pleased at the idea."

"He would be," Jarod nodded. "He uses every excuse he can think of to go see Parker."

She turned back to her stove. "What about you?"

Jarod sighed. Ethan had asked him several times to come along, usually just before the younger man had boarded a plane for Dover. So far, Jarod had found reason to be too busy with the legal labyrinth involved in setting up a new corporate office in Chicago by mid-summer, as Carl was determined to do. Ostensibly, he already did enough commuting half-way across the continent on Bennings' behalf that yet another plane trip – however short – wasn't all that appealing.

"I heard that," Margaret told him with poorly disguised frustration. "Jarod – he's your nephew. Kyle's son. I'd think you'd WANT him to know our side of his family."

"It isn't that," Jarod sighed again.

"Then what?"

"Parker and I don't get along very well – at least, not when we're in the same room," Jarod sipped at his coffee and finally revealed the uncomfortable truth. "I wouldn't want to ruin your visit with Jordan by causing a disruption…"

"That's nonsense!" Margaret left the stove and walked over to the refrigerator to collect the eggs that would be scrambled. "You're a big boy – certainly you can behave yourself for a couple of days…"

Jarod shook his head. "It takes two to tango, Mom – and sometimes the arguments aren't all my fault."

Margaret closed the fridge and put the bowl with the eggs on the counter next to the stove – and then she turned with her hands on her hips. "Then I suggest you call her and see if you can get her to agree to a temporary truce. For God's sake, you two are acting like children yourselves!"

"I've been meaning to call her today anyway," Jarod mused aloud. "I wanted to see how she felt now that the Centre wasn't hanging over her head like a ton of lead."

"Fine – discuss coming for a visit and declaring a truce for the duration," Margaret's suggestion sounded more like an order. "Besides, your coming will give you a chance to visit with Sydney – and maybe save yourself a minor fortune on phone bills for a while."

Jarod grew wary. "I don't want to make you or Dad feel…"

"Jarod," Margaret turned one more time, "your father and I have long since made peace with the fact that Sydney raised you and we didn't. It would be very unfair of us to ask that you avoid him while you're there."

"Emily won't be happy about this…"

"Emily is going to have to grow up a little more herself one of these days," Margaret said with a shrug, beginning to break eggs into the bowl. "She can't continue to resent these people – not with her own nephew living among them. One fine day, she's going to have to learn to leave the past in the past and move on. I keep hoping that friend of yours will help out in that area, but as yet…"

"I've tried to talk to her too," Jarod complained softly.

"So has Ethan, and so have your father and I," his mother informed him sadly. "But this is a burden that she's laid upon herself – and only she will be able to lay it back down again." She glanced over her shoulder. "So go call Parker already – or wouldn't she be up yet?"

Jarod snorted. "Knowing her, she probably got up at the same time she usually does – only found herself with lots of time on her hands and very few responsibilities for a change." He glanced over at his mother and found her staring at him with an expression that told him 'why aren't you doing as I asked yet?' "Fine – I'm calling! I'm calling!"

oOoOo

Sydney heaved a sigh of pure contentment. An entire lifetime he'd waited for an event like this one – and with the moment now here, he felt more alive than he ever had. His family had gathered in his home to celebrate together an event of monumental import: the demise of the organization that had so controlled their lives. His family – those two little words had been a treasure denied him for the greater portion of his life. He could still hardly believe that he had a family to reconstitute itself around him, much less that the malignancy that had forced each of them into a solitary existence – often completely ignorant of the others as a whole – had finally, irrevocably been defeated.

The scene of domestic bliss that ruled in his house that day was one so many others enjoyed without true appreciation of its value – but Sydney could barely breathe for his excitement. Broots and Sam were out on the patio, nursing the meat over the barbeque coals laid in a barbeque purchased decades ago with Jacob and kept all these years as a forlorn memento of hope in a corner of the garage. Angelo was sitting on the grass, not far away, playing with one of the first dandelion blooms to pop up in the midst of the green. Debbie and Michelle were conspiring in the kitchen – Michelle sharing her recipe for chili beans, no doubt, with the young woman that Broots' daughter was rapidly becoming. His grandson was entertaining one of his little friends up in the tree house that he, Broots and Sam had constructed that spring – an indicator of a future filled with similar small-boy get-togethers was the number of times in the past hour he'd heard the two boys laughing.

Parker had retired into the living room with her cell phone to handle the unexpected call from Jarod. Phone calls from Jarod were rare enough that they deserved undivided attention – and Sydney knew that he heard from Jarod far more often than Parker did. And yet, despite that, he knew that Jarod had helped formulate the plan by which the Centre had been shut down. How much of the call today, he wondered, had to do with that? How many of the questions she was fielding from Jarod were questions he himself would try to ask her when they had a moment alone?

After all, Parker was one of the three miracles that had graced his life in the past half year. Their relationship, already on new ground after a heart-to-heart discussion on a snowy mountainside in Utah when neither was sure either was going to survive, had only become closer and stronger when their true bond was revealed. If ever Parker had shown loyalty and fondness for Mr. Parker, she had shown ten times that for Sydney since their rescue and return home. She made no bones about their relationship, taking pride in addressing him as "Papa" every chance she got – especially in public. She'd made sure that Jordan's first introduction to him upon his release from the depths of the Centre sublevels had included being called "Grandpa." She was demonstrative, reciprocating and devoted – everything he could ever have wanted in a daughter of his own. He loved her dearly, openly and unconditionally, and he positively luxuriated in having the affection returned in same measure. What was more, he was fiercely protective of her and her mental state – and the finality of the Centre's demise posing a risk to the equilibrium she'd developed lately was something he wanted to defuse as quickly as possible.

Michelle was his second miracle. She'd rushed to his side, courtesy of Jarod's call, and then never left him again. The house in Albany had been handed over to Nicholas when his son had decided to teach at the university there, and Michelle had finished moving her most personal belongings and her wardrobe to Blue Cove. It hadn't taken long for the feelings both had once had for the other to reignite through the constant and almost intimate contact involved in putting on and taking off the back brace that had helped his vertebraplasty to heal properly. When Nicholas came for a visit – as much to check out how things were going with his mother as to meet his half-brother and sister – and expressed no reservations about the recent developments between his parents, Michelle announced herself as having moved into his home – and his bedroom – permanently. Parker, bereft of a female role model of parental age for so long, quickly accepted her and grew quite close. Michelle even found a soft spot in her heart for Angelo, often sitting in the chair by the fireplace with the child-like man sitting on the floor snuggled up to her knee, his head on her thigh and her fingers stroking his hair gently. In the bottom of a drawer upstairs in their bedroom, a small plush box containing a diamond solitaire sat waiting his finding both the right moment and enough courage to ask her to marry him and correct an oversight from over two decades earlier.

Last but not least, there was the miracle that was Jordan – a lively, frighteningly bright boy in whom Sydney could see both Parker and even a bit of Jarod. Never having met or gotten close to Kyle except at the moment of his death, it was only that part of the boy's father that most resembled his former protégé that he recognized. When Parker decided not to send the boy to a school for the exceptionally gifted, but to let the boy be a boy among other boys, Sydney cheered – his grandson wouldn't suffer from not having been given a chance at a normal childhood, as his father and uncle had once suffered. The decision had been a hard one, and it had its repercussions as the boy regularly outpaced his teachers – but grandfatherly advice and tutelage was slowly crafting a way for the boy to pursue his studies more in step with his precocious nature without becoming a chaotic influence in the classroom.

Sydney heard soft steps behind him and then smiled as Parker wrapped her arms around him from the back and laid her head against his back. "And how is Jarod today?" he asked gently.

"Fine – asking permission for his parents and himself to come for a visit to meet Jordan," she replied, snuggling against him a bit. "He wanted to make sure that such a visit wouldn't put us out at all – and to see if the two of us could declare a truce during the visit, so that the Russells wouldn't have their time spoiled with our bickering." She sighed. "Ethan would be coming too."

"Sounds like you have another family reunion to plan for," he replied, patting her hands at his waist. "I take it you said yes to everything – or you wouldn't be telling me these things." She nodded against him wordlessly. "Are you OK with this visit?"

Again she nodded. "We are going to need to talk face to face one of these fine days anyway," she told herself firmly. "We've spoken off and on, but we really haven't settled anything from Ogden."

"Then it's about time you did," Sydney told her and pulled on one arm so that she came out from behind him. "You two are much better as friends than as antagonists – this spat of yours has gone on long enough."

"I suppose you're right…"

"Of course I'm right," he exclaimed, giving her a quick hug. "Father knows best."

There was a muffled snort, and then he could feel her chuckling. "I needed that," she told him, her grey eyes sparkling again. "It's just that I don't want to ruin anybody's time – including ours today – with morose thoughts."

"That's my girl." He hugged her again and then set her away from him. "I suppose one of us should go outside and check on Jordan and his friend."

"I'll do it," she offered. "I could use a walk with some fresh air."

"Don't let Jarod get to you, Parker. He's another problem for another day." She nodded agreement. "When did he say he and his parents were coming?"

"The day after tomorrow, and just for a short visit," she answered. "We'll see how that goes, and then maybe a longer visit the next time."

"Sounds like Jarod feels just as awkward about this as you do," Sydney commented knowingly. "Go on, now – go see what our resident monkey has been up to."

Parker kissed his cheek and then pulled the screen door open and stepped through into the spacious and meticulously landscaped back yard. She walked past the two men discussing something about computers avidly over the sizzling meat and out across the grass toward the tall oak tree in the corner – stopping briefly to accept Angelo's offering of the dandelion.

Sydney moved to watch her through the screen, and then once more surveyed the situation around him. This was Paradise, he decided – absolute heaven. He'd never known that life could be quite this good.

oOoOo

Phil Carew pushed his time card into the slot at the bottom of the time clock and heard the ka-ching of the timestamp slam against the card stock. He tucked the card back where it belonged, lifted his cap and straightened his hair beneath it, replaced the cap and finally headed back toward the security officers' lounge to collect his lunch box and unburden himself of the key-check mechanism that was hanging heavily by his belt.

Another long night was finished, and another eight hours' worth of pay – less taxes – would be added to his paycheck. This job certainly had none of the glamour or excitement that had been promised him when he'd become a Centre sweeper, but it also didn't make him feel like he was walking a tightrope to disaster either.

Cleveland wasn't a bad town – Phil had a brother who was a lawyer who lived only a few miles away from the postage-stamp-sized apartment in downtown area. Having someone with whom he could spend time on the one weekend a month he had free was a fair trade for the big bucks he'd earned while being Lyle's number two man.

The thought of Lyle and what that monster had been doing while expecting him – HIM, a mere sweeper – to watch over the whole rest of the corporation could still bring up the hackles. Had Lyle not been sentenced to die in a Maryland prison hospital at some day in the future, Phil considered that he might be willing to take his chances and hunt the man down himself. Moving into the position of personal sweeper to one of the Tower executives was supposed to have been a career-defining promotion – and Phil felt definitely cheated.

Still, he had to admit that even though there wasn't half as much money coming in as there had been at the Centre, he could sleep at night. He'd not slept very well at all for the first month or two of Miss Parker's administration at the Centre – he'd heard through a contact he'd kept there that she was looking for him. She must not have been looking for him that hard, because he'd never been contacted – never picked up walking back from the liquor store on the corner or pulled over while driving to or from work. And now his contact had vanished – and the phone number for the Centre itself disconnected.

Phil walked out of the new high-rise office building and down the sidewalk toward the parking garage – and once more removed his cap. It was going to be another warm night – with virtually no breeze to ease the heat radiating up from the pavement. He missed the ocean, he realized with a jolt – when it had gotten warm in Delaware, he'd often found relief after work at the Centre walking the beach line before heading to his car. He wouldn't be doing that again for a good long time now.

The darkness of the parking structure made the heat almost suffocating. He walked to the elevator in the corner and pushed the button for the level at which he'd left his car that day and then sagged into the corner of the metal box. Mentally he berated himself. At least he had a job – although it had taken his brother's influence and lying a bit on his resume to get it. Nobody wanted a Centre sweeper on their payroll – not after the news agencies got finished with the exposé of just what the Centre had been about a few weeks back.

He was lucky. Phil unlocked his beat-up little Honda and tossed his lunch box into the passenger seat. He had to keep remembering that. He was lucky.

If only he could believe it…

oOoOo

"What?" Miss Parker answered the telephone with her normal greeting minus any of the usual frustration or heat that generally accompanied it.

"What time are your visitors going to be there today?" Sam asked very nonchalantly.

She began to smile and tucked the receiver between her shoulder and ear while she finished wiping off the kitchen table. "I'm expecting them anytime now – and I'm not exactly sure how long they're going to be here…"

"Do you want me there?" he asked pointedly.

"No," she took hold of the handset and shook her head. "I don't want the Russells to feel like I'm still playing Centre Chairman with a bodyguard, and I definitely don't need you getting all defensive when Jarod and I sit down to work out a few of our differences…"

"What if he hurts you again?"

Miss Parker sat down and cradled the handset gently against her head. "I'm a big girl now, Sam. I can take care of myself."

"I know that," he insisted. "I just don't like the thought of his saying something…"

"Like I said, Sam," she soothed, "I can take care of myself. I've been doing it for a very long time now." She drew her fingers through her hair to pull it away from her face. "But I appreciate your worrying about me."

Sam was quiet on the other end of the line for a long moment. "It's been my job to worry about you for so long," he admitted with a touch of chagrin, "that I don't know how to NOT worry anymore."

Miss Parker closed her eyes. She'd been afraid of this, and wasn't exactly sure how to handle the situation without dealing out yet another round of hurt feelings.

She'd known that Sam was watching out for her – even outside the parameters of their formerly comfortable employer-employee relationship. How far outside those comfortable parameters had been demonstrated at the family barbecue just a couple of days earlier. As the day began to wind down, Sam had come up close behind her as she stood in the arcadia door watching Broots, Debbie, Angelo, Sydney and Michelle giving Jordan – and each other – a thorough ribbing, and the two of them had chuckled contentedly at the scene. He hadn't touched her – he hadn't needed to. His proximity had spoken eloquently of his thoughts.

This new dynamic to their relationship – at least on Sam's part - had been coming ever since that day in the hospital when she'd finally been given a glimpse through all of his masks to the deeper emotions. Since then, they'd worked side by side – and in a number of instances, particularly in intense dispute with Triumvirate representatives about one or another point of separation, she'd seen flashes of that emotion again. Unexpectedly, she'd catch a glimpse of either a flash of pride when she got exactly what she'd bargained for, or as a flash of anger when she was forced to concede the point. Each time, that flash had lasted just a moment longer than the one before – and it had become only a matter of time before she would have to face what was going on. Obviously, the moment for dealing with what was going on – and the shape of how things would be in the future – was drawing very close now.

"We're going to have to talk about that one of these days," she said with a note of hesitation.

Sam was quiet again – reading her voice over the phone with the same ease that she could read his countenance when he was standing next to her. "Yeah," he agree with her, "I suppose we should at that." He paused, and then asked, "What about Jarod?"

"What about him?"

"Is there anything…" His voice died, obviously because he was uncertain enough of where things sat between the two of them that he questioned his ability to inquire into that quagmire – questioned his right to be jealous or protective.

"We used to be good friends," she told him with simple honesty. "To be honest, I'd be content if we could go back to being just good friends. As for anything more than that…" She sat and thought the idea through, aware that Sam was waiting for her answer. "…I honestly don't know – and I don't know how he feels either. I'm hoping that I'll have a little clearer picture of that after today."

"OK," Sam said, accepting this non-answer for the time being. "I'll talk to you later, then."

"Yeah. Talk to you later."

Miss Parker set the handset down on the kitchen table and pulled her fingers through her hair again. This was going to be a stressful enough situation, she didn't want to have to deal with Jarod and his family – knowing the history they all had between them – while having to worry about Sam and his emotional entanglements at the same time. He deserved as much focused attention on his feelings as Jarod did on his – and it was a real bolt of insight to realize that Sam was an important part of her world, just as Jarod was.

She knew Jordan adored the big man – called him Uncle Sam with a funny smirk on his face that told her that the boy appreciated other, more political, associations with that name. The boy's fondness was returned in full measure – Sam had been the motivating force behind several "guys only" outings to local basketball games while the weather had been colder and the construction of the tree house at Sydney's the moment it began to warm up to Spring. If she'd worried about lack of a male parental role model, Sam and Jordan's relationship had eased many of those worries over time.

The sound of a motor pulling up in front of her house and the motor then shutting off abruptly pulled her out of her reverie. She rose, put the telephone handset back into its cradle and walked to her front door to pull it open before her visitors had a chance to knock. Jarod had been the driver – and he was already out of the minivan, along with Major Charles. The sliding door pulled back, and Miss Parker got her first good look at Margaret Russell since their very brief collision on Carthis nearly five years ago – and saw Ethan peek out at her from behind his foster mother. She walked to the edge of her front porch. "You're right on time," she told the Pretender and suffered a brief, awkward hug.

"Miss Parker," Major Charles followed his son, with his wife on his arm and Ethan trailing along behind with a grin. "I don't know that you've met my wife, Margaret…"

"I saw her once for a very short time several years ago," Miss Parker told him, her eyes on the woman who had known, and perhaps even been friends with, her own mother. "Hello, Mrs. Russell."

"Call me Margaret." Margaret had her hand out and grasped Miss Parker's in a grip that was steady and firm – and warm. "It's nice to meet you properly at last under less stressful circumstances," she said in a kind voice.

"Hey there," Ethan greeted his big sister with a warm and tight hug that helped her relax just a little bit. "Long time no see…"

"Jordan's upstairs in his room," Miss Parker told them as she led the way into her living room and closed the door gently behind them. "Let me go get him…"

"You don't have to rush off," Major Charles told her as he found a place on her couch for himself and his wife next to Ethan. "I'm sure we'll get plenty of time to get to know Jordan – sit down and tell us about him first…" He gestured to an easy chair facing the couch on the other side of a coffee table. "Ethan has been able to tell us some things – but we'd like to hear what you have to say."

Miss Parker glanced at Jarod, who had yet to sit down. "Why don't you sit down, Jarod," she suggested. "I could get you all some tea…"

"Sit down, Parker," Jarod told her as he folded his tall frame into the matching easy chair next to hers. "I think I'd rather hear about Jordan from you too. Like Dad says, Ethan has told us a little – but you at least had met Kyle…" His words dwindled away, but his gaze held hers hostage. "Please?"

Miss Parker sat down into the easy chair and folded her hands into her lap. Feeling a little awkward she looked into the expectant faces of Jordan's grandparents. "What would you like to know?"

oOoOo

"Emily didn't come," Miss Parker said as she stood on her front porch and watched Major Charles carefully steer the minivan down the rest of the circle drive to take Jordan out to lunch and shopping. Margaret was in the passenger seat next to him, while Ethan and Jordan shared the seats behind the sliding door.

"She can't get over what happened years ago and simply refuses to come anywhere near Delaware," Jarod explained. "Besides, I think she and Carl had something planned with little Emily for today that they couldn't postpone..."

Miss Parker turned and looked at him. "Little Emily?" Her brow furled. "Who…"

Jarod smiled. "Ah – I didn't tell you. Carl found out that the little girl that survived the crash with you didn't have any family at all – and he applied to be named her foster parent. She's been with him for the last four months or so." Jarod chuckled at the memories of talking to his friend since that little girl had come into his life and home. "I think he may adopt her."

"And your sister is seeing him?"

"Well," Jarod shrugged, "he kept asking her out – she finally gave in – and they've been a twosome ever since. She and little Emily get along really well too, which helps matters. Carl calls my sister Em – like the rest of us do – so there's no confusion between Em and Emily."

"Amazing." Miss Parker turned back toward the inviting darkness of her living room. "How about some coffee?"

Jarod tipped his head at her. "What does your ulcer say about coffee?"

"I get one cup in the morning, and that's it," she told him. "That doesn't mean, however, that I can't make some for a guest."

"In that case, I'll take tea," he told her. "I drink coffee only first thing in the morning too – otherwise, it can keep me awake at night." He followed her through her house into the very light and homey kitchen and found himself a chair. "We need to talk, Parker."

"I know," she answered, pulling mugs from one cupboard and a box of teabags from another. "I hope you don't mind herbal tea."

"Prefer it, actually," Jarod responded and then leaned his chin into his hand to watch her. "I think I owe you an apology."

"I was the one that started the argument that day," she protested, unable to look at him and grateful that she had something with which to keep her eyes and hands busy. "I should be the one apologizing. It wasn't until about a week later, after a long talk with Sydney, that I finally understood why you'd stayed away at first – and since then, I've been kicking myself for not having seen it myself." Finally she turned and leaned her backside against the counter.

"No, you had a valid point," Jarod shook his head. "Once I got over being angry and hurt, I could see your point of view – and I felt horrible."

"I should never have accused you…"

"You had ever right to accuse me," he insisted. "A lot of what has gone on between us has been my trying to force you into my perspective – which wasn't fair to you at all."

"You were trying to open my eyes to the lies, Jarod," she answered. "That wasn't all about you."

"Getting you strip-searched so that I could get away cleanly wasn't about getting you to see the truth. Calling you at two in the morning just to piss you off wasn't about opening your eyes to the lies, Parker."

"Well," she admitted, turning when the tea kettle began to sound as if it were ready to boil over, "I'll admit that calling at two o'clock did get very old after a while."

"It was mean, and I'm sorry." He looked down at his hands. "I'm sorry about a lot of things that have gone on between us – all the mean-spirited little pranks. I can see now that they were my way of controlling you – my way of disrespecting you and everything you stood for by making you as uncomfortable or humiliated as possible – because that was what the Centre had done to me. Ultimately, those pranks didn't benefit either of us because I became what I hated most – and I think that was what hurt the most when you finally put it into perspective that day in Ogden. I thought I had stayed away to keep the nightmares at bay – when actually, I think I knew all along that one day you'd make ME see truth for a change. I pretended to be protecting my feelings when all I was doing was – again – controlling and disrespecting you and Sydney."

She turned to look at him. "That's quite a self-indictment, Jarod."

He sagged just a little. "The truth isn't always pleasant, Miss Parker. I kept pounding that into you and using it as a mechanism for my Pretends to help the underdog – all the while ignoring it where it related to me." He finally looked up at her. "I didn't have to have you strip-searched in Vegas, and I could have called you at a more reasonable hour. I didn't have to wake you up constantly. I didn't have to have a hand in giving you that ulcer."

"I didn't have to fight you…"

"Sure you did – any sane person would have. I fed you the truth in bits and dribbles – just enough to prove I had something legitimate to say, but I prolonged the process rather than just laying my cards out for you to see for yourself. I made the truth into a cat and mouse game."

"No, the Centre made discovering the truth a cat and mouse game – you and I were just never free to play by anybody else's rules but theirs," she shook her head. "And, in some ways, I think the only way for me to realize that you weren't just telling horrible stories about Da… Mr. Parker… and the Centre was to be forced to put some of it together for myself with your arrows showing me where to do my own looking." She lifted the tea kettle and began filling the mugs. "And besides, I knew that what had been done to you was wrong by every ethical standard known. And yet, there I was, trying to put you back into slavery again. The fault in what went on between us for so long isn't entirely yours, Jarod – even though I tried to make it all yours that day in Ogden."

"That still doesn't excuse everything I'd done over the years," he insisted sadly. "I didn't have to keep rubbing your nose in whatever mess I'd found. Just because I wanted to talk to you, I didn't have to wait until two in the morning to do it. I was thoughtless and deliberately mean – and I'm sorry."

She smiled at him. "I think I can forgive you – provided you don't decide calling me at two o'clock in the morning to chat is a habit you want to start up again."

He smiled back at her. "I don't like to even be awake at that hour anymore anyway," he told her. "I've become a regular nine-to-five guy; I enjoy my beauty rest."

Miss Parker finished pouring the boiling water into the mugs, put the tea kettle back on the stove, and then picked up the mugs to carry them to the kitchen table. "We've both changed quite a bit from what we were back when, Jarod. You're a 'regular nine-to-five guy' and I'm a mother."

"Jordan's a good kid, Parker," Jarod told her warmly, "and he looks a lot like his father. I'm glad you're giving him the kind of life he deserves. You're doing a good job – you should be proud."

"I am," she said, cradling her mug between her hands, "So, now that we've both put on our sackcloth and eaten ashes, are things OK between us again?"

Jarod picked up his mug and sipped at the hot liquid gingerly. "Isn't that supposed to be my line?"

Miss Parker allowed herself the luxury of a smirk worthy of her companion. "You've been a little bit slow on the uptake for a genius lately," she chuckled. "So what do you say? Friends again?"

Jarod allowed a wide smile of relief to spread across his face. "Friends again," he agreed with a firm nod. "I'm glad," he added. "I've missed being able to talk to you without wondering when or if you'd bite my head off again."

"I got pretty defensive there for a while, didn't I?" she responded, sipping at her tea. When Jarod nodded with wide eyes, she shrugged. "I suppose that's an apology I owe you. Most of the time, I was defensive and snapped at you for no reason – other than the mistaken one that said that if I put you on the defensive, you wouldn't hurt me as much. It was dumb, and it didn't work."

"We were both a product of our upbringing," he shrugged too. "Perhaps we understand each other TOO well – we know where all the Achilles' Heels are, and we aim for them the moment we feel threatened."

Miss Parker nodded. That had always been her defense tactic – the best defense was a good offense. "So what are you doing nowadays?" she asked, changing the subject very deliberately. "What's Carl up to business-wise?"

"Opening another center in Chicago," Jarod replied. "I've spent so many hours in the air going back and forth; I'm starting to think I need to invest in airline stocks soon." He lifted his mug. "And what are you going to be doing, now that you don't spend your days in that place just down the road?"

She leaned forward to put her elbows on the table and rest her chin in her open palm. "I'm going to have a summer vacation – I haven't had one of those since I was very young. I'm going to spend a lot of time with Jordan – and Papa… Sydney. And when school starts up again, I think I'm going to see about finding out just what kind of job all that college education I got back when will get me."

"Are you seeing anyone?" he asked and sipped more of his tea.

Miss Parker shook her head. "Not really. There is someone who'd like to start something, I think – someone who's become a very good and dear friend," she admitted – as much to herself as to Jarod, "but I'm not sure taking things any further than that is such a good idea, you know?"

Jarod nodded. "Been there, done that. Having a relationship fall apart and ruin a good friendship is the pits. That's what happened to me and Zoë."

"So you're unattached now too?" she asked, her eyebrows soaring.

"I'm between," he said, drawing himself up and taking another, longer sip of tea. "Like I said, things just didn't work out with Zoë, and I haven't exactly had a lot of opportunity to go looking for someone new." He gazed at her evenly and openly. "The problem is that I keep measuring everyone I meet by you – and you're a tough act to beat, Parker."

"Jarod…"

"No, let me say this – get it out in the open. Then we can deal with it – or not, as the case might be. Either way, we'll both be on the same page for a change."

Miss Parker sighed and nodded.

Jarod's dark chocolate eyes bored a hole straight through to her soul. "I can't find anyone else because I'm constantly waiting for you. I love you, Parker – I always have. You were the first girl I ever met; I fell in love with you then and I've never fallen out of love with you. Zoë knew – and it finally drove a wedge between us that made it impossible to even be friends anymore."

Miss Parker tore her gaze free and looked down into her tea mug. "I'm extremely flattered – you should know that. Any woman would be thrilled to have someone with your qualities and good looks say such things – and I am. I love you too, but…" She paused and worked up the courage to look at him directly again. "I love you as a friend, Jarod – but I'm not IN love with you. I don't think that things would work out well between us as anything more than friends, mostly because we DO understand each other too well – and because we both have made a habit of knowing where the other is most vulnerable and attacking them there. We have an awful lot of baggage between us."

"We could try…"

She nodded. "Yeah, we could. But, you know, I think you're in love with your idea of who I could be – not who I AM – and that would cause trouble in the long run too when you try to change me into who you want me to be. What's more, the moment the relationship got a bit rocky, you know and I know that we'd be right back to old habits – aiming for the hot buttons and sorest spots and hitting at them with no mercy." Her storm-grey eyes bored into his. "You know I'm right."

She paused for her words to sink in and could see the very moment that he realized her point – a deep disappointment filled his gaze. "You're too important to me as a friend to risk losing completely because we don't know how to fight fair with each other," she told him gently. "I love you too much for that – and I don't want to make the same mistake Zoë did. You're my best friend – you always have been. Be my best friend again – be my confidante. Let's just not do our mutual confiding at two in the morning anymore."

He kept his gaze linked with hers and then finally nodded slowly. "I suppose I can be content at least that we're not at each other's throats anymore. Still, I think I was kinda hoping…"

Miss Parker put a hand on his as it curled about the outside of the mug. "One day you'll find someone new, Jarod. You never know – you may already know her. She'll know you – maybe even know the dark side of you – and accept you anyway. It won't be a relationship with the kind of drama and fireworks that ours has been, but it will be good in its own way."

Jarod listened to her, and found his mind slipping back to Philadelphia – to Sandy and her little boy. Maybe Parker was onto something. Just the night before, he'd had supper at the Danziger apartment, played with Sean – and felt very much at home and at peace there. In their time working together, Sandy had certainly seen almost every side of his personality that existed – and she liked him enough despite that to invite him over quite often. She was pleasant, pretty, bright, funny… Yes – maybe Parker was more on the ball in this respect than he'd been as well. "This man who would like to start something…" he asked carefully. "Does he know you that well?"

"Oh yeah." Miss Parker nodded. "He's seen just about every side of me there is." She sipped at her tea and watched her old friend's face closely. She'd seen, in the midst of his disappointment, a hesitation that spoke of a sudden insight. "But something tells me that that you already know who I was talking about – that there IS someone you just hadn't thought of that way before."

"There's someone I think I may need to have a long talk with when I get home," Jarod admitted with a sense of wonder in his voice. "I don't know how I've missed it all this time."

Miss Parker gazed at him gently. "Discovering that you love someone when you hadn't been paying attention to your heart very much can be very… startling. You're lucky – at least you're beginning to appreciate what you've got BEFORE you end up with a dead body on the porch, like I did." Her voice shook but didn't break – thoughts of Thomas still had the power to hurt her.

"Parker…" Jarod reached out and took her hand in his gently.

"I'm OK," she told him, drawing in a deep, cleansing breath and tossing her hair back. "But tell me about this woman you're suddenly realizing you're closer to than you thought. How did that come about?" She squeezed his hand and then freed herself to relax back in her chair. "Talk to me Jarod. Spill." Her smile was warm and encouraging.

Jarod took a deep breath and found it remarkably stress-free. He had his best friend back and, if what she'd said were true, a future to build for himself with a woman he was beginning to think he could learn to love. He had his parents; he had begun to mend bridges with Sydney. He was free from having to live life watching over one shoulder for the Centre. His smile grew soft. "OK… Her name's Sandy Danziger and she's been my secretary at the Bennings Foundation."

oOoOo

Dr. Isaacs watched his patient shuffled across the office floor to the easy chair and plant herself gingerly on the edge of the seat. Natalie Schaeffer's case was one of fairly straight-forward post-traumatic stress syndrome – but so far, it hadn't responded to any of the standard treatments.

Natalie had been hospitalized after her rescue from the mountains of Utah and then released – with an appointment with a United Airlines psychiatrist to help her deal with what she'd been through. Unfortunately, Natalie hadn't kept the appointment, and had slipped very quickly into a deep depression. After a failed suicide attempt, she'd been brought here, to Bellevue, for treatment and supervision.

"How are you today?" Isaacs asked with his usual, calming smile as he pointed at the chair his patients sat in during their talks with him.

"Fine." Natalie's voice was flat and uninflected.

Isaacs was genuinely pleased – he hadn't needed to prompt her more than once for a response. "Do you feel like continuing our discussion from last time?"

At that, Natalie's eyes widened and she began to shake her head. "No…"

"Until you deal with things that happened on the flight…"

"I don't want to talk about it!" Natalie insisted, wrapping her arms around her tightly. Why couldn't they just leave her alone? She didn't want to think about… No – that was a trap! She began rocking back and forth in her chair, pulling her attention from the doctor and humming a soft little tune.

Isaacs sat and watched her for a moment sadly, then pressed a button on his intercom. "Miss Schaeffer is finished with her appointment – you can take her back to the day room."

A white-garbed orderly with a relatively kind face – rare for the types that normally applied for jobs in that position – gently took hold of Natalie's elbow and helped her to her feet. Isaacs looked down into the file folder that chronicled the progress, or lack of progress, in the Schaeffer case and noted down an increase in the prescription for Zoloft. Counseling to desensitize her to the circumstances of the crisis she'd survived would be nigh to impossible if he couldn't penetrate the shell of terror that had hardened around the slightest thought of the experience.

At the rate she was going, Natalie Schaeffer would be a client of his – and a ward of the State of New York, at the expense of United Airlines – for a long time to come.

oOoOo

Sam folded his arms over his chest, looking out over the sand to the ocean beyond and watching the sky and water grow dark with the fading of the sunset on the other horizon. Soon all he would be able to sense would be the sound of the waves.

It had been a very long three days with Jarod and his family in town visiting Parker and Sydney, and he was starting to get restless. He'd never felt quite so constrained in his life, trying to give Miss Parker the room she needed to maneuver and figure out where she stood with these people who were bound to be an important part of Jordan's future. For over ten years, he'd had almost daily contact with her. And now, after three days with no contact with her at all, he felt like an outsider – someone who was associated with but didn't belong – not really. It was a cold feeling – a very lonely feeling.

Sydney had told him last night over the phone that the Russells were leaving today – probably right after breakfast. Jarod had to get back to his job at the Bennings Foundation, Ethan had his job to return to, and Margaret and Charles wouldn't want to stay in Blue Cove without either of their sons. So, with any luck, life would be getting back to normal – more or less. At least he hoped so. He was fairly sure he'd find out sometime soon after the white minivan was gone.

He didn't really blame the Russells for their curiosity about either their newly-discovered grandson or his mother – or for having made arrangements to stay in town long enough for a little of the novelty to wear off on both sides. Sydney had reported that Jordan had told him that he thought his new grandparents were "really neat" – and that he was looking forward to going to Virginia to visit them on their farm sometime later in the summer.

Still, it was hard to stay away from the summerhouse. With so very little else to do with his time anymore, he'd found himself running surveillance on Miss Parker's residence – watching the comings and goings of that white minivan and seeing just which set of people was taking it out – protecting her without being obvious about it. The Russells had made arrangements to stay in the little Wildflower Inn on the outskirts of Blue Cove, but had gotten back to their rooms so late on both evenings that he'd decided it was too late to try to call Miss Parker and see how she was doing. He'd even stayed away for the entire day today – long after that breakfast departure time had come and gone – afraid to come face to face with any decisions she might have made in the interim.

Frustrated, he stalked along the edge of the grassy escarpment. How had it come to this? When had he decided to ignore his own counsel and let himself become even more emotionally attached to his boss than he'd been, to the point that the thought of another man being close to her was driving him nearly to distraction? For ten years he'd been able to tether his regard for her into a big brother's watchfulness and protectiveness – but in the last six months, something had changed. It had started in Utah, on the day he'd crossed his invisible line – but whatever it was, it hadn't been just him.

Miss Parker had softened toward him after that day. She was still capable of snapping and barking orders right and left – still more than likely to wear her Ice Queen persona like a shield and simply overwhelm any disagreement or obstacles in her way. But there had been a sharp reduction in the number of times she barked at HIM. If anything, she'd shown him more trust and confidence – made him directly responsible in capacities that he'd never been involved in before, asked his opinion. And that was only during their work hours.

There had been a moment at the family picnic at Sydney's that he knew he'd come close to crossing that invisible line again – and that Parker had just stood there, waiting perhaps to see what he'd do. She'd been standing at the screen door, watching the controlled mayhem going on outside – and he'd come up behind her and stood with her, chuckling at the antics. If he'd had any balls at all, he would have put his arms around her right then and there – to see if he'd just been dreaming. If she'd punched him – as she surely would have if he was off-base, probably knocking him unconscious in the bargain – he'd have known to back off and maintain the distance. As it was, this uncertainty was sure to give him a sour stomach before long.

He glanced over his shoulder at where he'd left his car – invisible in the darkness now. She'd had all day to relax after her visitors had left. Maybe he'd wait until right about Jordan's bedtime before knocking on her door. They needed to talk – privately.

One way or the other, he had to know how things sat between them now – even if it meant hearing things he didn't want to hear. Not knowing hurt a helluva lot worse.

oOoOo

There was stirring behind the apartment door, and then the door cracked open to the limit allowed by the security chain. "Boss!" Sandy exclaimed and then closed the door enough to disengage the chain entirely so she could open it. "What are you doing here?"

"Can I come in?" Jarod asked, breathing in the familiar air of good cooking that seemed to permeate every corner of the Danziger apartment. It smelled like a home – his mother's house had a very similar ambience to it. No wonder he'd always felt so comfortable here. Why hadn't he noticed that before?

"What's the matter – you run out of Pez refills again?" she asked with a wicked smirk as she stood aside for him. "You're getting lazy about buying them for yourself again…"

"Cut me some slack, will ya?" he chuckled back at her as she closed and secured the door behind him. "I've been out of town all weekend." His eyes sought her out and took in the very casual faded jeans and tee shirt she was wearing, and the fact that her light brown curls were pulled back and away from her face into a ponytail that hung halfway down her back. "You look like you've been relaxing nicely in my absence. Where's Sean?"

"It's after eight – Sean's in bed." She led the way into her kitchen and gestured at the table there. "And you didn't come here just to discuss my dress code on my days off either, I'm sure," she observed pointedly as she picked the tea kettle up and brought it to the sink to fill it. "What's up?"

"I had a chance to do some thinking while I was away," Jarod admitted, watching her bustle with a slightly more observant and aware eye. Sandy looked good in faded jeans and tees, he decided – just as good as she did in her power pantsuits that made her look at least as much an executive as he was. "And I had a friend open my eyes to a few things that have been right in front of my nose for a while now."

Sandy turned, and her hazel eyes studied the man in her kitchen critically. "That doesn't sound good," she began cautiously. "Weren't you going back to Delaware to visit that woman you've been mooning over for years?"

Jarod's eyes widened in surprise. "I haven't been mooning…"

"Like hell you haven't," she shook her head and opened the cupboard door to pull down a tea pot and two mugs. "For your information, Mr. Suave, your voice changes when you have her on the phone." She glanced at him in anticipation of another protest of innocence. "I'd be a damned poor secretary if I didn't notice these things, Boss – you know that…"

"My name's Jarod," he corrected her in a low voice. "We're off the clock, remember?"

That went back to a discussion held several years back in which he'd asserted that non-business hours meant that all semblance of hierarchy or authority got left in the office. She'd reluctantly agreed at the time, but wasn't about to back down now. "We're talking about business dealings…" she insisted.

"No, actually we're not," Jarod disagreed with her. "Yes, I went back to Delaware; and yes, I did visit a woman that I've known for most of my life."

Sandy turned away to reach for the glass jar in which she kept the herbal tea bags she knew were Jarod's favorite. "What happened – she tell you 'nothing doing'?"

"Not exactly. She pointed out where we needed to limit our relationship to one of being just friends," he admitted slowly. "After a while, I realized she was right."

"Just friends works just fine," Sandy commented quietly.

"True," Jarod rose and walked over to behind her. "It has," he conceded. "But I've had the time to think about things, and I'm wondering if there's room for something more."

"With her?" she asked slightly more sharply than she'd intended.

"With you," he answered gently. "Once I finally admitted that what I've been dreaming about was an illusion, I started to get a deeper appreciation of what I've actually had all along – with you, with Sean…"

Slowly Sandy's hands stilled on the counter. "This isn't funny, Jarod."

"I'm not trying to be funny, Sandy," he told her, putting his hands on her shoulders. "I'm very serious."

"You're my boss…" she tried again, reaching with a hand that shook to tear open the wrapper to the tea bag.

"I've been more than that for a long time," Jarod disagreed, reaching past her to take the tea bag out of her fingers, put it on the counter, and then turn her to face him. "Face it – you don't invite someone you only think of as your boss to eat dinner with you three nights a week and sometimes more often. You don't sit and watch TV with your boss at night – or have him put your son to bed." He put a finger under her chin and lifted it until she couldn't help but look him in the eye. "That isn't standard employer-employee practice, is it?"

"You didn't have anyone," she complained very softly. "I thought you could use a friend. Sean…"

The finger under her chin became a hand at her cheek. "Just friends was just fine for a while, remember? But now I think I'm ready to see if we could try for more." His dark chocolate gaze caught and held her hazel one tightly. "If you're interested, that is. All you have to do is say the word, and we can go back to just employer-employee..."

"I'm interested," she replied slowly, her green-flecked eyes gazing deep into his. "I've always been interested. I just didn't think you'd ever…"

"Wake up and smell the coffee?" he finished for her with a gentle smile.

"Something like that." Her hands began to slip from where they had been pushing against his chest defensively to where they could slide around his waist loosely.

"I like this," Jarod stated in a low and purring voice as his other hand found a spot on her waist as well. She smelled like fresh flowers. Why had he never noticed that either?

"So do I," she responded in an equally low and vibrant voice.

Jarod bent down to her and brushed his lips against hers very lightly. "I think I like that too," he noted with a growing smile.

"Really?" she came back, her eyes beginning to twinkle.

"Let me try again," he suggested and kissed her a little more firmly, his fingers cupping the back of her head. "Oh yeah," he nodded with his lips so close to hers that they brushed lightly, "I definitely like that a lot."

His arm tightened and drew her closer as he lowered his lips to hers again – and began building his future in earnest.

oOoOo

Sam barely had to knock on the door before it swung open wide. "I've been hoping you'd stop by," Miss Parker told him as she stepped aside for him to move past her. "It's late – what took you so long?"

"I've been staying out of your way," he answered honestly. "Giving you room to do whatever it was you needed to do while Jarod and his family were around."

"They're gone, Sam," she declared quietly. "They've been gone all day. Even Jordan's already gone to bed."

"I know." He gazed at her, his eyes resting softly on her face. "I thought you could use some time to just relax from having guests around."

"Still watching out for me, aren't you?" she asked, obviously not expecting an answer to a rhetorical question. She turned and closed and locked the door. "I think I could use a drink – would you care to share a nightcap with me?"

"Sure." Sam let her lead him into the living room and gesture him into a seat on the couch while she continued on to her liquor cabinet. "Brandy, if you have it," he added.

"Brandy it is," she replied, turning over two old fashioned glasses and pouring a splash of dark liquor into the bottom of each. She walked back to the couch and handed him down his glass before taking a seat at the opposite end. "Banzai!" she toasted, lifting her glass to him.

"To life getting back to normal," he responded and took a careful sip of the rich liquid.

"I think it's time we had our talk," she stated slowly and softly, her eyes never leaving his face.

"I know," he repeated. 'Their' talk would probably be mostly her talking to him, he realized. She was already aware of where he stood. "How did it go with Jarod?" he asked, hoping to put off the inevitable for just a moment or two longer.

She nodded. "It went well – we didn't fight or argue at all."

"That's good," he commented, wishing she'd be a little more forthcoming.

"We decided we could be best friends again," she added as if hearing his wish and deciding to grant it.

"Best friends," he repeated slowly, his eyes seeking hers with his brows raised in surprise. "That's all?"

"That's all," she nodded firmly. "Jarod and I know each other too well, and we've been through too much, to try for anything else."

Sam sipped at his brandy, hardly tasting it as it warmed him from the inside out. "I always thought he had a 'thing' for you – and that you had one for him. It was the Centre that kept you two from getting together all this time."

Miss Parker was quiet for a moment. Sam wasn't saying anything that she hadn't thought herself at one point or another over the years. More – he'd been around and with her long enough to watch her respond to Jarod and his antics since he escaped. He knew what he'd seen. "The Centre did keep us from getting together," she admitted. "I don't know what would have happened if we hadn't been the people we were raised to be – if we hadn't had the Centre influencing and controlling our relationship from the start." She sipped at her brandy and then looked at her former sweeper intently. "But those were the breaks – and we have to live with the consequences. Part of that is recognizing that we'd destroy each other trying to stay together. We've never fought fair with the other – I don't know that we'd be smart enough to change that much now."

"And Jarod agreed with you?"

"Once he figured out that I was right, yes," she answered. "He didn't want to ruin our friendship by trying for something more anymore than I did. And after he stopped chasing rainbows with me, he realized he has someone else in the wings that he hasn't really talked to yet." She smiled softly. "We spent most of that first night talking about her."

Sam stomped down on the thrill of hope that surged within. "What about you? Do you have someone else in the wings?"

She turned to face him on the couch, tucking one foot beneath her. "No, not really," she replied with frankness. "Right now, I'm just working on getting used to being a full-time mother and daughter."

He stared at her for a long moment and then drained the rest of his drink in one large gulp. It was now or never. "I was thinking – hoping really," he began, putting his glass on the coffee table and turning to face her directly too, "that maybe now that things are changing, we – you and I…."

She mirrored his actions in tossing the rest of her drink down and then setting her glass aside while she swallowed. When she turned back to him, her grey gaze had softened. "Sam," she said softly, "what do you want?"

"Permission to step over the line, ma'am," he answered honestly.

"I'm not your boss anymore," she reminded him carefully.

"That doesn't matter. I still need your permission – now more than ever. I wouldn't want to try anything that I didn't know you were comfortable with," he countered. "I don't want to ruin anything in reaching for more than I have a right to."

"Sam…" Her heart went out to him. He was sincere, and he was devoted – and for once, the smoldering emotion he'd kept so carefully hidden for so long was shining and obvious in his eyes. "I'm not ready for that kind of relationship right now – not with you, not with Jarod, not with anybody," she said as gently as she knew how, reaching out for his hand. "Don't you see? My life has been turned upside-down, inside-out and backwards – and I'm barely able to keep my eyes on making sure I stay right-side up right now. I've grown up never knowing anything except working at the Centre – and now the Centre is gone completely and I'm unemployed. I've never been good with kids – and now I'm a full-time mother. I've been a part of a thoroughly dysfunctional family – and now I have to adjust knowing that I have a father and brother who are as devoted to me as I am to them."

"Miss Parker…"

"Parker," she corrected him gently. "Miss Parker was someone who existed wholly at the behest of the Centre, Sam. Now that the Centre's gone, so is she."

"Parker," he amended cautiously, "I know you've probably only thought of me as muscle…"

She shook her head. "Not for a while now – and you know that. It isn't wise to give mere muscle the responsibilities I've given you over the last few months." His face had fallen and she could almost feel the way in which he was pulling in on himself in disappointment. "Sam! Don't do this! I need you…"

"You don't need me," he said quietly. "A good executive assistant would do as well…"

"Stop that," she snapped at him in a faint echo of her old imperiousness that brought his gaze up to hers sharply. "I couldn't trust an executive assistant the way I trust you. You're an important part of my world, Sam – I need to know you're behind me so that I can make the transition from Centre bitch to something more realistic and normal."

"But I love you," tumbled from his lips before he had a chance to stop the words – and once out, he didn't have the desire or the energy to regret them. "I'm in love with you."

Miss Parker's eyes filled with tears. "I know you are," she replied softly. "And, I suppose, in a way, I love you too. I'm just not ready to give you what you want from me. I'm not IN love with you. Not yet, anyway."

Sam's heart was sore enough that it leapt at a chance to grasp at a thin straw of hope as it floated past in the wind. "Not yet, you say." He brought his other hand together to hold hers between the two of them. "Does that mean that maybe… somewhere down the road…"

"The future's not set," she replied calmly. "I don't know what will happen between now and a year from now. But I do know that, whatever does happen, I want you in my life – in my family's life. Jordan adores you and has complained several times that you'd been gone too long lately. I've missed you too – I've missed my protector."

"Is that all that you want – a protector?" he asked, not exactly sure if he could pull his emotions back and stow them away like that – not now that he'd had the luxury of giving them a full airing.

"For now, yes," she nodded, "or at least a gentleman willing to be patient and wait for me. Give me some time to figure out just who I am and what I want, now that the Centre isn't controlling my every thought and action anymore." Storm-grey eyes pleaded with him. "Love me or not as you choose – just don't push me for more than I can give you right now. Please?"

"It's going to be hard," he admitted, "but I'll try to be patient."

Miss Parker's smile of relief was wide. "Thank you," she whispered, moving unexpected toward him and giving him a quick hug. "Thank you."

Sam's arms closed around her and held her close, luxuriating in the unexpected opportunity to know what it meant to hold her the way he wanted to. "I'm not going to be able to stop loving you, you know," he murmured into her ear with a husky voice.

"I'm not asking you to," she replied, pushing herself away before she could send any mixed messages. "I'm just asking you to give me time and space to figure things out first. We can take it day by day from there."

"Mommy? Is Uncle Sam here?" came the sound of a small voice on the stairs.

Sam could feel Miss Parker jump slightly next to him at the sound of her son's voice. "Yeah, I'm here, Buddy," he replied in a deceptively calm voice. He threw his arm over the back of the couch so he could look back at the stairs and the small boy now coming down the last few steps. "But your mom told me you were already in bed. What are you doing up so late?"

Jordan padded over with bare feet to stand in front of the couch and face the big man. "I missed you," he announced in a slightly petulant voice. "You haven't been here for days and days, and I was hoping you'd come over today… Don't you like us anymore?"

"You had visitors, Buddy," Sam reminded him as he reached out and pulled the boy onto his lap and then felt Miss Parker lean in closer as well. "That was your family, and they came a long way to get to know you. You needed to spend time with them – not me."

"But you're my family too," Jordan insisted and then looked up into his mother's face for confirmation. "Isn't he, Mommy?"

Storm grey eyes gazed deep into brilliant blue pools. "Absolutely," she replied warmly, "Your Uncle Sam has just as much place here as Uncle Angelo does."

"See?" Jordan exclaimed and curled up on Sam's lap, leaning into the big man's chest and folding himself into a content little bundle. "You belong."

Sam's arm closed around the boy tenderly and held him close. He felt when the boy relaxed into slumber after just a few more moments of silence. "He's asleep again," he announced in a amazed whisper.

"I'm not surprised," she answered softly, "he wore himself out fussing that you weren't anywhere around. Do you mind doing the honors of putting him back to bed? He's missed you so," she whispered as she leaned over, her hand smoothing the hair out of her son's face and then landing on Sam's arm. "I'll freshen our drinks while you're gone. Besides, I think we've said everything we needed to for now – haven't we?"

"Yes, ma'am," he said finally and watched her get to her feet before rising as well.

"We're going to have to work on your becoming more authoritative from now on," she said from halfway across the room, shaking her head at him, "because reminding you that I'm not your boss anymore all the time is going to get very old very quickly. You don't say 'yes, ma'am' to someone you think of as a sister, Sam."

"I've never had a sister before, and I sure as hell don't want to think of you as one for very long," he defended himself quietly so as not to rouse Jordan from his slumber and heard a snort of amusement from the direction of the liquor cabinet.

Miss Parker smiled to herself as she unstoppered the carafe and poured two more liberal dashes of brandy into the glasses. This was almost comfortable terrain – she'd been in this place emotionally before. Thomas had been very patient and waited for her to come around, and yet never hidden his true regard for her. Sam was cut from the same cloth, she thought as she turned back to the couch and put the glasses back on the coffee table. He was stable, had long since proven himself a patient man and evidently was determined that she learn to love him back – Thomas had been much like that.

In that moment, she knew as surely as she knew anything that the time would come someday when she'd be ready for Sam – just as the time had come when she'd finally been ready to love Thomas. And this time, she knew that there was no Centre agenda to stand in her way – or do harm to the one she loved to get to her.

Sam began to mount the stairs with the small boy in his arms, with each step slowly coming to appreciate what he'd just been given.

He belonged. He had a place here. He wasn't where he wanted to be – not yet – but there was plenty of time now to give Mi… to give Parker the space she needed to feel secure enough to risk her heart again before he'd press his suit again. As for her son… He looked down into Jordan's peaceful face pressed against his breast and knew himself to be totally committed to making sure this child's future stayed bright and safe. He would help Jordan grow up to be the kind of man he would be proud to claim as his own son – even if he had to remain an 'Uncle Sam' to the end of his days.

This was family. He belonged here – he wasn't an outsider. And as he walked down the short hallway to the bedroom door, he knew that even though he had yet to win Parker's heart, he'd never be without love and family in his life anymore – that he'd never have reason to feel left out in the cold of loneliness again.

FIN

**A/N:** Well, we've come to the end of another long tale. I would like to thank my regular reviewers for their continued support: Doranwen, Nans, Nancy and TessaD, you guys are what make a fan fic writer's work worth it. Next week we'll begin a new story.


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